by Angus Donald
We howled out of the gate in a tight formation, ninety-odd mounted men all in a compact wedge with Robin and me at its tip, and Hugh, Sir Thomas, Boot, Robert, Dame Nicola and the armoured knights and men-at-arms squeezed in behind. Then came the archers – each armed with sword and shield as well as his long yew bow and at least one quiver full of shafts.
In truth, many of the enemy were unhorsed and fled at the deafening clatter of our hooves on the stone cobbles. Directly ahead lay the cathedral and a few stalls selling vegetables and cheese in the forecourt of the House of God, and I remembered that it was a Saturday – market day. A makeshift barrier, a striped pole across two barrels, barred entrance to the cathedral yard. I rode down one man-at-arms who fled before me, disdaining to use my lance, merely trampling him under the churning legs of my steed. Beyond the market stalls, before the church façade, I saw groups of mailed men, several dozen, armed with swords at least, some hauling themselves into the saddle, some already mounted. I thought I caught a glimpse of a tall pale man dressed in a blinding, snowy cloak. But we did not leap the barrier to engage them. We stuck to the Marshal’s plan.
‘Left wheel, left wheel,’ my lord was shouting and we turned, hooves sliding on the cobbles, spraying sparks from the iron horseshoes, and rode north on the main street that led towards the gate, which even now was suffering the first onslaught of the Earl of Chester’s valiant men.
It was a simple plan – the walnut between two stones – with the north gate of the town as the walnut, and the Earl of Chester’s force outside and Robin’s inside as the two crushing stones. If we could capture the gate and hold it, the rest of William the Marshal’s army, which was massed to the north and west of the town walls, would surge through its gates and flood Lincoln with men. If we could take the north gate, the day was ours, the battle won.
If.
We surged up the main street, heading directly for the gate a couple of hundred yards away and sweeping all opposition out of our path. I glanced behind to check that Robert was all right and saw him crouched over the neck of his horse, still with his lance in his right fist, his young face screwed into a scowl of determination. I looked forward and saw smoke and flame leaping from the double doors that sealed the middle entrance on the old gate. Beyond one of the man-sized side gates I clearly saw a huge blond figure, wielding an axe, backlit by fire, chopping through the remnants of its oak planking. For an instant, my mind played tricks on me and I thought it was my old friend Little John carving his way through the enemy defences. But he was dead, God rest him, and the axe man soon joined him – a tiny French crossbowman loosed from a yard away, piercing his huge chest, knocking him back from the doorway and out of view. A pair of axe men filled his place at once. There could be no doubting the courage of the Earl of Chester’s men. Some of them seemed to have scaled the walls. Figures were battling atop them either side of the gatehouse, a scrum of men in mail shoving, stabbing, falling to the cobbles, screaming, dying.
A company of dismounted men-at-arms, four score spearmen, perhaps more, was marching in good order down the road ahead of us; plainly they meant to reinforce the Frenchmen desperately holding the north gate. They heard our approach and turned about at an order from their officer, presenting their spears nervously, alarmed at being menaced from behind. We gave them no chance to form properly. I heard Robin yell, ‘Charge! Charge!’ and we smashed straight into them. A spearman poked at my face and I knocked the point aside with my shield and drove my own lance deep into the fellow in the rank behind him. Sheer momentum alone took us into the heart of their formation – I had Fidelity out by now and was lashing left and right like a madman, slicing faces, breaking shoulders, shattering limbs – and though they matched us in numbers, they were on foot and we scattered them like chickens before a pack of snarling dogs. I saw Nicola de la Haye crash her mace down on the helmet of a spearman with a most unladylike oath. Robert had his sword out and parried a spear thrust with ease. Boot was at his shoulder on an enormous carthorse. Then I saw my son kill for the first time. A man in red ran at him, yelling; Robert leaned back, allowing the spear to pass before his chest, and replied superbly with a cross-body overhand chop that split the fellow’s helm and dropped him stone dead. An axe man on foot swung at Robert’s back and my heart lurched, but Boot beat him to the blow, his long oak cudgel crunching into his chest before the axe could land. The man was hurled away and disappeared under the stamping hooves of a group of our archers.
The French company was running in all directions and the way to the north gate was clear but for a handful of men-at-arms at the gate itself looking fearfully at us over their shoulders. The enemy on its ramparts were now fully aware of our attack from the rear. I saw men throwing down their weapons and running. Chester’s purple-and-gold standard appeared on the walls to the right of the gate.
The plan was working!
Then it all went horribly wrong.
I don’t know how the White Count did it. Somehow he’d mustered a hundred mounted knights in full armour and brought them up from the cathedral on a street parallel to the main thoroughfare. When we were but twenty yards from the gate, twenty yards from victory, he sprang his ambush. Our men were disordered, out of formation, cutting down the remnants of the company of footmen, when he and his men charged out of a side street to our right and crashed into the mêlée. I saw a dozen of our men go down under the first onslaught, speared in their saddles by the galloping Frenchmen. The White Count was in the vanguard, a silver blade flashing in his hands as he hacked a poorly armoured archer across the torso, splitting his body with one vast blow. The assault shattered our ranks. I saw Robin desperately battling with two French knights, his face spattered with blood. A knight spurred at me, sword whirling – and missed. I took him with a low lunge to the groin, then hauled Fidelity free of his flesh in a spray of gore. I turned my horse. Mayhem all around. Blood and screams. The stench of shit from freshly opened bowels. Our men-at-arms and archers falling on every side. Our charge had been utterly halted; all cohesion gone. Our men were fatally entangled with the White Count’s knights and the remnants of the company of infantry. All around was a sea of struggling men. Nicola de la Haye’s face was a mask of blood but her mace was still swinging. Sir Thomas was ten yards from me, killing and killing again. Robert’s horse had been pushed up against the side of a tavern; his right arm was bleeding, but Boot was before him sweeping enemy knights aside with giant loops of his cudgel. I tried to reach him but a pair of knights charged at me from either side. I blocked one blow on my shield and killed the other man, lancing my blade into his neck. Then both were gone, swept away in the mêlée like leaves in the mill race.
The second ambush hit us from the western side. A company of at least fifty men-at-arms charged howling into our other flank, long spears darting in and coming back bloody. Enemies were everywhere. I dodged a spear point, swatted at an enemy helmet. Robert had disappeared and my heart was scooped hollow with fear. I heard Robin shouting over the tumult: ‘Back, back! Back to the castle!’
I slashed at a horse’s head and the animal reared away, its knight cursing in French, but it cleared a path and a few moments later we were galloping away from the north gate, back down the main street. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a wall of charging French knights, and – thank God – Robert and Boot just spurring out of their reach.
I snatched a last glance up at the high wall and saw that Chester’s standard had disappeared. French men-at-arms were once more thick on the ramparts, shooting down on the other side with crossbows. Hurling spears. I turned my horse’s head south and kicked back with my spurs.
A hundred yards later, halfway to the castle, Robin halted us and we made a rough wall across the main street. Some of the archers dismounted, formed a line and started loosing sporadically at the French, who were gathered in a compact mass fifty yards away. Our remaining horsemen, their mounts lathered in sweat, eyes rolling, were miraculously in some sort of order behind the bowme
n. Robert was there, and Boot, who was tying a bandage tightly around my son’s wounded arm, and Sir Thomas. And there was Robin, Hugh and Nicola de la Haye. But of the ninety men who had thundered so confidently out of the castle a mere quarter of an hour earlier fewer than half that number remained alive.
The White Count had his knights well in hand. I saw him haranguing them from the front, ignoring the whistling shafts that sped past his shining cloak. The horsemen were readying for a charge once more, dressing their ranks, lifting shields and brandishing bloody swords. And flocks of spearmen were gathering on their flanks.
I looked over at Robin and saw to my surprise that he was shouting at my son Robert, with Sir Thomas standing beside him, looking shamefaced.
‘We must retreat to the castle, Robert,’ my lord was saying loudly, as if speaking to an idiot. ‘Look at them there, we cannot hope to stand against them.’
‘No, my lord. We can make a breach. I know we can do it. Sir Thomas agrees.’ My son was pale as snow, with two pink marks on his prominent cheekbones as he argued with a man more than thirty years his senior. The wound on his arm seemed not to trouble him in the slightest. The embarrassed knight beside him was nodding slowly.
‘It can be done, my lord,’ Thomas said. ‘I truly believe it can. It is certainly worth a throw of the dice.’
‘We must get to the castle,’ Robin repeated. ‘It is only there that we will be safe.’
‘And what then? A long siege?’ said my son. ‘Our grand plan, our attack, will have failed – will there ever be another? I think not. The war itself hangs in the balance. Lose here, lose it all. And we can win this. Please. My lord, we can still win. If only you will be bold. Please be bold.’
Robin caught my eye. I had no idea what was being discussed. I was still getting used to the idea that my stripling son was challenging the Earl of Locksley – the veteran of a hundred fights – on tactics of all things!
‘I can’t believe I am taking orders from a child,’ Robin said. ‘The price of a long life, I suppose. But never let it be said that I was too faint of heart to take the bold course.’
In a louder voice, his battle voice, Robin said: ‘This way, men, this way – quickly now to the western wall.’
An instant later, we were cantering west off the main street, with Robert grinning like the schoolboy he had so recently been.
We charged down the street towards the town wall, forty or so knights, men-at-arms and archers, with Sir Thomas leading the way. We reached the row of houses and hauled back on the reins, coming to a confused and milling halt, and I could not help but look right to the untended hovel where I had encountered a wine-sodden Miles the night before. Our sudden change of direction of flight had clearly dumbfounded the French for we saw no sign of the massed ranks of their fearsome cavalry. But we would not be hard to find. And they could not be far behind.
‘Where is it, Thomas?’ Robin was asking the knight and he pointed south along the row of houses.
A few moments later, there it was – an arch of ancient stone in the west wall filled in a haphazard way with a tumble of rocks and crumbling bricks, old dry mortar and gravel. And, screened by an overgrown rose bush, a small hole through which Thomas and I had squeezed our way to freedom.
‘Through you go, Thomas. Remember: as fast as you can,’ said Robin. ‘Every moment counts.’
The knight nodded briskly, squirmed into the tight hole and disappeared.
‘Archers, form a perimeter on this line, now.’ Robin indicated an arc around the ancient entrance and the dozen surviving bowmen dismounted, tied up their horses and shuffled into position. Not a moment too soon. Men in mail were boiling out of all the houses and side lanes in the vicinity and coming down the street behind us in a loose crowd. Spearmen in red and black were appearing, too. Sergeants were shouting in French, ordering the infantry forward. In the far distance I could see cavalry, the White Count’s proud chevaliers trotting in perfect formation along the street, a little more than two hundred yards away. Sighting us, the French horsemen stopped, just out of bow range.
The White Count rode out alone towards us.
Hugh took command of the archers effortlessly. ‘Pick your targets carefully, men,’ he said, his voice steady as an oak. ‘See if you can stick that fancy fellow out in front with the silver cloak. Ready now. Nock, draw and loose.’
‘Everyone else – to work!’ shouted Robin. As if to show us what he meant, he bent down and seized a tumbled block of yellow masonry from the ground under the arch and hurled it to one side.
‘Wide as we can make it,’ he said, bending once more and grasping another.
With every other man there, apart from the bowmen in their fragile perimeter, I rushed forward to the wall. I grasped a chunk of jutting masonry and heaved with all my strength, expecting it to come loose. Nothing happened. Perhaps it had been luck the night before when we had managed to make that small hole to escape through – perhaps someone had already loosened it. But the mortar holding the rest of the jumbled rock in place in the ancient archway was set solid. I stopped heaving, my arms and shoulders burning from the strain. I saw the other men were having as much trouble breaking the masonry from the wall. Some were using their swords as levers to wrest the stone free. Robin was hacking viciously with a dagger and I saw him loose only a single fist-sized piece of stone. We could not break through this archway – not unless we had a week of peace, a dozen crowbars and a battering ram to aid us in our labours.
I snatched a glance behind. The spearmen were creeping forward, shields held high, and, behind them, the White Count’s cavalry were also coming on at a slow walk. Our archers were nocking, drawing and loosing with a swift and terrible rhythm and a handful of men fell at every second beat of my heart. But the enemy numbered many hundreds and more were appearing every moment. Very soon, the White Count would order the cavalry to charge and we would be crushed like beetles underfoot between the horses and the unbroken wall of the archway.
A crossbowman popped up and loosed from behind an abandoned cart fifty yards away. One of our archers fell with a strangled squeak, a quarrel embedded in his chest. Another quarrel clattered against the rubble to the side of the arch. I bent again to a big lump of rock jutting from the wall and heaved. I could feel my face turning purple, every muscle and sinew straining fit to snap. I released my grip and stood up. Another archer fell to a crossbow bolt. The hole Thomas and I had made was barely six inches wider – the work of one of the men-at-arms and his axe. I had to quell the urge to dive into it and wriggle my way through. Robin looked at me from the other side of the blocked-up entrance, one red half-brick in his hands. He threw it aside. I had evidently caught him in an unguarded moment and for just an instant he looked utterly appalled at the task ahead of us. The other knights and men-at arms were just standing by, beaten by the wall, hands bleeding, nails broken, heads sunk on their chests or staring bleakly at the enemy. Robert was sitting on a pile of rubble to one side, head hanging low, with Boot standing before him, his cudgel cocked, ready to defend his charge against all comers. There was no way through the archway. We were trapped. It was too late to seek sanctuary in the castle. The mass of French men-at-arms were just thirty yards away, the cavalry close behind them, and despite the archers’ efforts they were coming closer all the time. Another bolt crashed into the wall beside my knee.
The White Count’s cavalry had risen to the trot. I could feel the pounding of their hooves through my boot soles.
Robert was looking at me, smiling sadly. I took a step towards him. But the boy stood, grasped Boot’s huge arm. ‘I’ll be fine. You must help Father now,’ he said, pushing the giant towards me. Boot came lumbering over and I wordlessly showed him the block of masonry that I had so utterly failed to budge.
He bent his knees, seized the chunk of stonework. I took the other side and we heaved. The thick slabs of muscle either side of his spine bulged and knotted. My head felt as if it were about to explode. But then – by God
– I felt the stone move. We heaved again and, with a great rumbling crash, and an explosion of old dust, we ripped it free and the heart was torn out of the blocked Roman gate. Between us Boot and I carried the enormous piece of stone to one side. As I stood panting with effort at one side, Boot returned and plucked a smaller block of masonry out of the gap. A gigantic cascade of rubble followed. There was now a hole as wide as two men underneath the arch and through it, as the dust cleared, I could see horsemen not fifty yards away, hundreds of them and in the first rank the dark face of Sir Thomas Blood, grinning like a demon under his helmet and waving the battle of William the Marshal, Regent of All England forward to the charge.
Robin’s men set to work again with renewed vigour. Every man among us seized pieces of the walled-up entrance and hauled them out of the way. Like an army of ants, we swarmed over that ancient archway, the bowmen abandoning their perimeter and joining in with a desperate urgency, and I swear we had picked it clean of rubble in less time than it takes to say a Hail Mary – I do not jest! It was that swift. Boot was magnificent, ripping whole foot-wide sections from the gate. Even Dame Nicola deigned to seize a broken brick or two and toss them to one side. Just as the very last stone had been flicked aside, we all stepped back and William the Marshal, at the head of a hundred shining knights and twice that number of mounted men-at-arms, crashed through the arch to tear into the enemy that was now almost on us.
They smashed straight through them, tossing the White Count’s men left and right with the surging power of their charge. And Robin’s men were swiftly back in their saddles and following in their wake. The perfect ranks of the enemy horsemen disintegrated. There was no longer any sign of the Comte du Perche and his distinctive silvery cloak. The Marshal’s men were laying about them with their swords, sending the footmen and cavalry reeling. The French were slipping away, some openly fleeing. I saw old William – at seventy years of age, mark you – shout a challenge to a knight in a yellow livery, charge him and send him running with a flurry of well-aimed blows.