Son of the Night

by Mark Alder

  The six good burghers who had emerged with their heads in nooses were swamped, men-at-arms leading the way into the city, the bowmen and the lesser poor streaming in behind them. Dow saw the Earl of Warwick, his red surcoat marked with the bear and ragged staff, his sword drawn, trying to protect the men in nooses, calling his pages about him. Some cheeky fellow gave a sharp pull on one of the nooses and its wearer was tugged off his feet. The dispossessed at the foot of the walls took their chance, some running for the open countryside, some towards the sea, others back into the town. More people fell in the stampede; fights broke out between bowmen and men-at-arms.

  ‘These men are for the king’s justice!’ shouted Warwick. ‘The men of Calais are the king’s property!’

  But it was useless and eventually Warwick gave a big shrug and turned into the city itself. The men who had emerged from the town to face the king’s mercy stood bewildered, wide-eyed, with the expressions of deer at the moment they are struck by the hunter’s arrow, before they realise they are dead. But they weren’t dead. They were ignored. Dow saw them turn to each other. They had expected anything but this.

  Dow ran past them, into the city, to try to prevent the slaughter.

  12

  The first blow from the prince’s lance struck Eu’s horse and sent it staggering sideways into the throng of spectators who had gathered to see the show. Eu struggled to bring the stricken animal under control as a thick gaggle of townsfolk dived out of its way.

  Some booing from the lower sort present, but the prince raised his hand in apology and Eu, once he had mastered the horse again, raised his in acknowledgement, though he had to swap mounts.

  The sun was lower in the sky, spreading pink over the blue, the shadows longer. On the second pass it would be at Eu’s back, not in his face as it had been before. The prince looked magnificent. He had spent the spoils of his Crécy campaign on impressive new armour – a large breastplate in the German style, a springing leopard in gold atop his great helm and the whole kit lacquered in black. His surcoat was emblazoned with his new symbol – the three ostrich feathers of Bohemia, which he wore in honour of blind King John who had so nobly and suicidally charged the English arrows at Crécy.

  Eu lifted himself into the saddle of the fresh horse, his jousting armour so heavy and stiff compared to his battle kit. Still, better that than be smashed to pieces. The second pass, the horse throwing its head before leaping forward. A thump, a splinter and he was twisted violently in his saddle. The prince had hit him hard on his left shoulder, all but unhorsing him. His arm felt like a struck gong, all a-tremble, and he thought he might have broken something again. Never mind, get the horse about, put out the right hand and feel the lance placed within it. The crowd’s roar was loud now even to his muffled ears. Their prince was about to fell an enemy – and not just any enemy: France’s chief cockerel, the constable himself, never bested in a joust.

  ‘We’ll see.’ This time he would make it stick.

  His horse careered forward and then everything slowed down.

  In his eagerness to strike the prince, he had not paid any heed to the incoming lance. Eu was ripped from his saddle, on impulse flinging his feet from the stirrups. It was as if he flew, as if he could refuse the ground’s invitation to join it and simply keep going in the air until he settled on a branch like a bird. He hit the sawdust hard, all the wind driven from him, his head snapping back and taking a heavy blow.

  People were all around him – pages, doctors, onlookers, wellwishers, ill-wishers. He vomited inside his helm. It was taken from his head. Blood in his mouth. Was this it? ‘God receive me,’ he said to himself. A smiling figure above him, offering him his hand. An angel? No, a man.

  ‘Well done, Eu, well done.’ It was the prince himself, a hole in his breastplate like it had been made by a pavilion stake, the stuffing of the gambeson bursting forth like a mushroom growth.

  Someone sat him up, unstrapped his shield. The prince crouched in front of him, tapping his own breastplate.

  ‘Send this one back to the armourer’s, eh? Your lance went through it like a finger through the crust of pie!’

  ‘Did I unhorse you?’ The question seemed stupid, childish, even. But he’d asked it, head spinning, thoughts jumbled.

  ‘Not quite,’ he said.

  ‘You’d have done for any other knight in the kingdom, sir,’ said the page Marcel. ‘It’s the lord’s first time on the sawdust ever.’

  ‘Can’t say I like it much,’ said Eu. A tooth felt loose, his head ringing like an Easter bell.

  ‘Still got the axe and the dagger to come yet, Eu,’ said the prince. ‘Plenty of time for your revenge.’

  Eu vomited again, a mess of blood and snot exploding from his nose.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

  They got him to his feet, put an axe in his hand. The ground shifted sideways, tilted like the deck of a ship in a storm, and he fell again.

  The crowd were baying ‘England! England! England!’ He had never heard such a strange cry. Men chanted the name of their lords, they sang the names of their home towns or their king. But England? Was that not a seditious cry, a shout against the Norman yoke, inherited from the rebels of yore? Was Edward, who claimed to be King of France, now calling himself an Englishman? The old kings of England would have seen that as an admission of common birth.

  He got up under his own power.

  ‘Take off my helm and bring my basinet,’ he said.

  The prince beckoned his page and his jousting helm was taken from where it dangled at his shoulder too. The modern basinet that replaced it had a tilting visor and Eu, still reeling, was bizarrely reminded of a duck. Strange thoughts came and went. The prince’s armour, pierced. How? An image of the collision came back to him, the shattering of the lance. A flash of brightness. The feel had been different and odd. His own basinet was strapped on, lighter and with greater vision than the great helm it replaced. It was marked with a golden circle to represent a crown and topped with a fleur-de-lys-De-Lys. A gift from Edward to mark the exalted status of his captive. Eu knew who would end up paying for it – himself, through his ransom. Why did such banal thoughts come easily to him, when he might be about to die?

  Little Marcel, his page, knew his business, fumbling with the knots to tie the helm on, buying his master precious seconds of recovery. Now the light of the day was filtered through tiny holes, like sunlight through trees. Eu felt strangely relaxed, as if lying by a river on a summer afternoon. Then he thought the points of light were stars. He fought to clear his head. If you focused on the inside of a basinet it would indeed be like a night sky with stars in it. You focused beyond it, pretending it wasn’t there, and it afforded a good view of your opponent.

  Like any trained knight, Eu was used to taking blows and to shaking them off but he had been hit very hard. He could not make himself concentrate on the potentially mortal combat that was to follow. The axe in his hand seemed unfamiliar, just a shape divorced from its function.

  The pages were clearing the debris from the track. Why? They never did that – the shards of lances, the broken hilts were normally left on the field for curious boys to collect. Or to rot. Whatever, pages did not scavenge the field for shattered wood. The thought was like a leaf on the wind, here and then gone. He coughed. More blood.

  His head cleared a little and the prince helped him to his feet.

  ‘I’ve no wish to take advantage,’ he said. ‘If you would rather retire . . .’

  ‘I’m fine. I’m fine.’ In his everyday condition, Eu might have wondered about the wisdom of allowing a man who had just had all sense knocked from him to make decisions concerning his fitness to continue. His brain reduced to the consistency of blancmange, he felt ready to go, though his body seemed to vibrate like a struck bell. A small footsoldier’s shield had arrived on his arm.

  The jousting partition was lowered and wound in, flopping over the sawdust like a wounded snake.

  They
would fight before the king. The great trembling inside Eu rose up and for a moment he could hear nothing. The prince was speaking to him? What was he saying?

  ‘Let’s make this look good?’ No one wants to be hit with an axe. Three good, well-signalled swipes, easily blocked with the shield and then likewise for the daggers; that was the way sensible men went about things, particularly when they had reached Eu’s age and prominence in one piece.

  No, the prince was not saying that. Eu inclined his head forward.

  ‘I always play to win, Eu.’

  ‘Very good.’

  A trumpet sounded. Was it that of Heaven? No. The start of the foot contest. His page spoke to him, lips moving, sound issuing. No sense. The king waved a flag – a golden round table motif upon it. Oh yes, we’re all meant to be at the court of the new Arthur, aren’t we? How did thoughts like that come so easily, when the reality of what he was facing appeared as if through a fog, something seen only in a distorted reflection, not of its true self?

  ‘England, England !’

  A white light sparked in front of him, the herald of pain. Lying with his back on the ground, the events of the previous twenty heartbeats came back to him. The prince had advanced and struck him hard with the axe at the side of his head. He saw him coming. Was he still coming? No. Eu had been struck. Either good workmanship or good luck meant the count had not been killed. Eu had an intense ringing in his ears and his vision was momentarily blurred. Eu saw the prince extending his hand towards him, pulling him upwards. The page guided him back to his mark. The basinet had been deformed by the blow and now the breathing holes were too close to his nostrils, restricting his breathing, making the helmet impossibly hot. He pulled up his visor. It was sheared away at one side and he had to bend it to clear his line of vision. Now it stuck out from his head like a metal wing.

  He didn’t see the flag drop this time but the prince came on again. A big cut down onto his head, the same as before. This time Eu threw up his shield and returned a blow of his own – a weakling’s strike that clattered off the prince’s shield without him even having to move it. Both strikes having missed, they went directly to the third. The prince cut down at Eu’s leg, smashing into his greave. Eu, in desperation, had both hands on his axe and took a falling swipe at his opponent, catching him squarely on his helm and knocking it clean from his shoulders.

  The prince was unfazed, smiling at him.

  ‘A good strike, cousin. And now daggers!’

  A page – not Marcel – pressed a dagger into Eu’s hand. It was an ornate, jewelled affair more suited to ceremony than the field of combat.

  He looked at its rubies glinting in the sun, little blood drops sparkling from their field of gold.

  ‘Again!’ King Edward cried out.

  Eu’s leg was numb from where the axe had struck, but it seemed his armour had saved him worse injury. The prince came at him and in an instant Eu’s head was clear. His rattled brain emerged from its fog as if into a clear dawn, everything brighter and sharper than it had been. He had heard tales of knights, sore pressed, gaining this instant of calm among chaos and now it settled upon him.

  The prince was careful in his advance, the blade of his dagger bright as a sun flash on a summer lake. They circled. One strike from the prince was just an exploration, Eu’s reply the same. The second was more serious as the men engaged shields. Eu’s arm was blocked out but the prince slid his dagger down and into Eu’s leg, though it did not penetrate the armour. Three more circles and then the prince went for him, trying to smash his dagger hand with a stab from the side of his shield. Eu got his shoulder into the prince’s shield, turning it aside and exposing his inner arm to an angled thrust. The prince cried out as the dagger found the unarmoured inside of his forearm.

  Eu fell back onto his arse but the prince had dropped his dagger, blood all over his hands as he tried to stem the flow of bleeding from his arm. Pages surrounded him, bringing bandages. The great lion Sloth roared out – in approval or disapproval, Eu could not tell. Then the crowd went quiet, silent, or so it seemed. He unlaced his helmet and blood poured down his neck. The force of the prince’s strike on his helm had cut him.

  Eu tried to stand, but his strength was gone.

  ‘You did it, sir, you did it!’ Marcel was close at his ear.

  ‘Bring me the lance heads,’ said Eu. ‘All of them from my broken lances. As soon as the people disperse, find them. And for God’s sake someone bring me a cup of wine!’

  13

  The city was in a poor state. Habits die hard and the invaders, drunk with success and much wine, had set fire to a grain store and three rich houses before the king was able to restore order. Only the presence of a detachment of wreckers – men employed for their skills in destroying the enemy’s property – saved the city from burning. They quickly demolished the burning buildings, ripping them down with great hooks on ropes pulled by horses.

  Dow ran through the tight streets, barrelling over the siege debris, the smashed timbers, the rubble of houses caved in by war engines, the piled bones of dogs, cats, horses and rats, stripped of their meat.

  Everywhere he went he saw horrors – senseless murders: a boy of ten with his throat cut, bled white on the crimson ground; a husband trying to defend his wife and daughters against the mob; a rope-maker who had used the last of his wares to hang himself.

  ‘Stop! Stop!’ he shouted. ‘This is to be our Eden, it cannot be built on the bones of our brothers!’

  No one paid him any heed. The frenzy was on them. A year’s worth of bad feeling had fermented in the invaders’ guts as they shivered in the snow and the rain and the mud before the implacable city walls, and now it vomited forth, carrying all before it. Dow came to a big guildhall, that of merchants, announced by the sign of scales at the door. The door was wide open and inside he heard screams. He went within into a big meeting chamber surrounded with the arms of the merchant companies.

  A gaggle of the poor huddled in the far corner while Wyland, his ravaged face drunk with delight, poked a dagger at an old man he was forcing to dance for the entertainment of five or six bowmen – one of whom played a small pipe. Dow recognised the very people who had been looking to hang Wyland not a summer hour before. Now, one wore a rich cloak, another was weighed down with silver plate, while one more pulled at a terrified, thin girl, trying to rip open her ragged gown.

  Dow felt a dry anger rise in his throat.

  ‘Brothers,’ he said, ‘these are our kin.’ The piping stopped.

  ‘They’re merchants!’ said Wyland.

  ‘No, they’re poor people like us who have taken refuge in here. We should be their protectors.’

  ‘They’re church-blinded fools,’ said Wyland. ‘See!’ He jabbed the dagger towards the old man, who shrieked and crossed himself.

  ‘Then they will be converted, not killed.’

  ‘Send them to their God or ours!’

  ‘Lucifer is not a god. He holds this life as important as the one to come.’

  ‘Well, if he’s not a god, who gives a Saracen’s ball-sack what he thinks?’ said Wyland. ‘Look, your Antichristness, or whoever you are, you’ve helped me out before so I’m going to give you a chance. Leave now.’

  ‘What do you say?’ said Dow to the other men.

  ‘Such freedom is allowed to the followers of God – why not to those of Lucifer? We do no more than any Christian army.’

  A voice from the gallery above:

  ‘Wahey, fellows! Look what I’ve found. More gold than I can carry !’

  A stout Londoner had emerged, clad in a great gold chain. He showered coins on those below. The men scrambled for the loot as the Londoner cascaded down more and more coins.

  ‘This truly is Eden!’ said Wyland. ‘It rains gold from the heavens! And look, there are rubies in this treasure!’

  He drove his dagger into the old man’s heart. The man fell, bright blood spurting out over the coins.

  A woman screamed and
leapt on Wyland. Two of the Frenchmen, driven to desperation, threw themselves weakly at the bowmen.

  Wyland stabbed the woman, kicking her legs from beneath her and sending her sprawling down. He bowed extravagantly to Dow.

  ‘All in the service of the new Eden!’ he said. ‘Though we don’t mind making a few coins on the side, eh, boys?’

  Dow freed his falchion from his belt and split Wyland’s skull. It seemed everyone was on him then – the bowmen and the French. A dagger stabbed at him but he cut off the hand that held it; he was grabbed from behind but Dow was trained as well as any knight. He swayed his hips to one side and struck back at his attacker’s groin with the pommel of the falchion. The man held on but Dow pulled out his own misericord in his left hand and stabbed back. The grip loosened but his troubles were not yet over. A Frenchman had picked up Wyland’s dagger and came lunging for Dow. He stepped aside.

  ‘I am trying to help you,’ he said, but it was no good. The man came on and Dow had no choice but to kill him, taking him underneath his arm with a cut from the falchion.

  Two bowmen ran out of the door, one clanking with plate, the other holding his surplice like an apron, full of chinking coins. All the French were dead and a bowman sat with his back against the wall, a livid wound at his chest.

  Only the man with the pipe remained. He, it seemed, had avoided the mayhem. Was he simple? He stood with both hands on the pipe, as if ready to play, staring at Dow as if enchanted. The Londoner in the gallery had disappeared. To Dow it seemed that only he and the piper existed, that all the noise and chaos of the city’s sacking was so much birdsong.

  ‘Brother,’ said Dow, dropping his misericord and extending his hand. ‘Brother, we cannot build Eden this way. Help me hold the building until wiser heads arrive. This money should be shared to help us in our new life here.’