Hawkwood

by Jack Ludlow

  Attacking across a bridge is difficult, so few men would be able to deploy. If Hawkwood had been in the shoes of whoever commanded on the east bank he would have never attempted it. That it happened he put down to the enemy being French by their banners, high-born and puffed with arrogance. It was the same stupidity as the battles won by King Edward: each Frankish knight looked to his pride instead of common sense. In such minds no mere mortal, and certainly no peasant soldier, could stand against their chivalry.

  Six armoured knights lined up abreast of each other and began to advance, slowly as suited their heavy destriers, the mounts also partially protected by the mail slung on their chests. On each lance there flew a coloured pennant and every shield had on it the rider’s coat of arms, proof of their chevalier status. Heads were protected by plumed helmets that testified to the owner’s wealth by their elaborate and individual designs.

  The crown of the bridge was well within range of Hawkwood’s men and their captain waited until his enemy was at that point before ordering that they fire. To him what followed had a sweet sound, the swish of a salvo piercing the air, not as loud as Crécy or Poitiers but audible nevertheless. Skills had not been allowed to rust during the occupation of Pont-Saint-Esprit. Outside the walls stood the butts these men had used to keep such a thing sharp and the speed of the reload and fire was as good as it had ever been.

  The missiles, each the length of a tall man’s arm, fell upon the line of knights, to ricochet off their armour, those that missed doing the same off the stones. It was the horses who suffered, not their riders, from what was plunging fire. That was the aim: to so discomfit the mounts they would become impossible to control, causing their heavily armoured riders to tumble to the ground as the mounts reared and bucked, to lie there like a beached fish as they struggled to rise again.

  That was when the crossbow bolts came into action. They fired a projectile that could penetrate armour and that applied to those who had retained their saddle as much as to the others rendered vulnerable by having fallen, four in total after the bolts had done their worst. Foot soldiers with a wall of shields then came forward to seek to rescue them and get them to safety. Several fell to the reloaded crossbows as well as more plunging fire from the ramparts.

  ‘Enough,’ Hawkwood called, when the pair still mounted had retired to safety. ‘Let’s keep our arrows for more pliant flesh.’

  ‘We’re not short,’ Alard insisted; he had spent the last weeks with wood, fletching and metal headtips to ensure an ample supply.

  ‘Not yet, friend, but who knows how long this siege will last?’

  The only other action that day was to cover the withdrawal of Baldwin’s men as the sun went down, made necessary as papal troops appeared on the west side of the river. It could never have been held and had been nothing more than a gesture, a way of saying to Pope Innocent, his cardinals and his noble supporters that his remission of sin was necessary. It was going to be applied to the souls of many of those who had come to serve his cause.

  As expected, the enemy tried to effect a coup, seeking to emulate that which John Hawkwood had achieved and overcome the walls by a combination of subterfuge and surprise. The Hawkwood palisades had been torn down as a matter of course. On a moonless night the papal troops crawled along the riverbank, likewise using the sound of the river to seek to mask their movement but it was a watercourse less potent than previously. The attempt was stymied by the dropping of flaring bales of hay, which lit up the whole strand and the men upon it.

  Hawkwood, in anticipation, had built platforms that could be slid out from the top of the walls. Onto these he put his best archers who, with such clear targets unable to respond, made merry. With these sitting ducks it was no more difficult than firing at a straw roundel in the butts. The attack was not only driven off; they left behind many bodies of those wounded and killed. The former were despatched by a party of men from Sterz’s own brigade of Germans sortieing out, their bodies thrown into the river to float down to Avignon as a message to Pope Innocent to tell him the price of his attack on the Great Company.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It does not take long for those holding a fortress to discern the mood of those besieging them. It was plain that the papal forces lacked the kind of will and sense of purpose that would come from a unified command. Innocent had gathered a heterogeneous army made up of individual contingents. Given he was no military leader but wished to exert control through his various cardinals, and they competed for his attention, he was in fact commanding something held together only by his promises of redemption.

  Attacks were launched against the walls but with none of the purpose Sterz and his captains had previously witnessed, and when the men on the parapet outnumbered or matched their assailants then the use of ladders was futile and generally fatal. The defenders waited in anticipation for the building of siege towers and had set in motion various stratagems to confound them; they prepared in vain. No sign or sound of carpentry or metal forging disturbed the riverside songbirds, creatures so settled that they were never silenced.

  The strand was, of course, relatively free from assault in that manner, which meant the main task of Hawkwood and his archers was to deny the Pope the bridge, which would keep his contingents from easily combining. Every attempt to execute joint attacks was thwarted by long and crossbowmen. When darkness fell, the likes of Jonzac, John Thornbury and Francis the Belge would lead out raiding parties to ensure the enemy was denied sleep. Behind them came the archers under Ivor and Alard, to recover as many of their arrows as they could, which was not many given a great deal ended up in the river.

  As the weeks passed with a lack of threatening activity, it became possible to move more freely in the streets of Pont-Saint-Esprit, no longer packed with cattle, sheep or hen coops. They were being eaten, though John Hawkwood, ever the jester, had used a small ballista on the ramparts to fire a daily carcass into the papal camp, which stood as an excellent way to let the enemy know that it would be Doomsday before hunger became a weapon.

  ‘But that day will come,’ Sterz pronounced at yet another council, ‘as sure as God is in his heaven.’

  ‘Winter is upon our foes,’ was the gleeful response of Baldwin, no longer so pessimistic. ‘We all know how much discomfort that brings on in siege lines.’

  ‘Not the same problem in these parts as it was in Picardy.’

  Hawkwood’s intervention got several of his confrères nodding, while recalling past discomforts. This far south the weather was rarely truly inclement: if it rained, and it did, the downpours tended to be short and sharp, quickly replaced by watery sunshine of enough heat to dry out the landscape and those in occupation of it. The sign that it was bad elsewhere showed in the run of the river, not in spring spate but flowing strongly enough to create eddies and white water where it ran into obstacles like the pillars of the bridge.

  These besiegers would not experience the sustained misery of endless days in which the skies darkened and torrents fell, to turn paths into mud, wash away poorly sited tents, leave men shivering in clothing never dry, as well as covering everything they owned with mould and rust. If the sun came out further north it was to usher in biting daily winds or heavy overnight frosts.

  ‘I say we have stalemate,’ Sterz pronounced, ‘and that has within it dangers. We still have good stocks of food, but it takes no great wit to see the speed with which it is diminishing. We are becoming victim to our own strength.’

  It was, Hawkwood had come to realise, the one factor he had not included in his calculations when advocating that Pont-Saint-Esprit could not be taken, based on a numerical advantage made possible by the inherent superiority of defence over attack. The latter had to seriously outnumber the former to be successful and the Great Company was so powerful Innocent could never raise and sustain the quantity of men needed to overcome them on the ramparts.

  But such a potent force had to be fed and for all the excess by which they had begun, it was obvious that
the supplies were being consumed at a rate that posited a day when they would be no more – not immediately but in the easily foreseeable future. The wiser citizens had begun to hide food for what they saw as the coming dearth, not that such games would keep them whole. Freebooters would find their hoards and see them starve before they themselves succumbed.

  Yet there was danger, if only on the horizon. In essence, if the Pope could just keep his forces in place until spring then he would have created the conditions necessary to force a surrender and such an outcome would be hard to disguise. There were ways of alleviation, like sending out the old and sick, indeed expelling the whole of the citizenry, but that would only bolster the papal cause; they would know the end was near.

  Jonzac spoke up, his tone positive. ‘Innocent is not without his own difficulties. There are men from Aquitaine in the papal host and I have exchanged words with them.’

  ‘I too,’ added Baldwin, ‘with my fellow countrymen.’

  A high number of the men outside the walls were German-speaking – they owed allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV – while every possible nationality was represented within the Great Company, even Frenchmen. In a lull in fighting, and they were of necessity frequent, communication between enemies was commonplace. Some even came to the walls to trade for food rather than go foraging. If it was frowned upon it was impossible to stop.

  ‘Not all are happy with what was promised,’ Jonzac added.

  ‘Will they not stay as long as they are paid?’ Leofrick asked. ‘The coffers of Avignon are said to be bottomless.’

  ‘I think some would go who came for faith, not a wage. They were promised remission of sins committed, plus an indulgence against future transgressions. It seems not all read the undertakings fully and relied on their priests to do it for them.’

  ‘When will the faithful learn never to trust the words of a man ordained?’

  Again Hawkwood, in saying that, hit a nerve. Pope Innocent had gathered his lances and foot soldiers with the promise that with the indulgences granted they would bypass purgatory and go straight to paradise. Such a blanket act of forgiveness would have repercussions, not least in denting future income for those around the papal throne who had made fortunes from the sale of such undertakings and wished to continue to do so.

  Thus, the missive calling the faithful had been cunningly composed. A more careful reading of the details showed complete absolution applied only to those who died in God’s service, really the Pope’s. It was not, as had been supposed, a universal and total pardon but partial, and many of the men who had flocked to the banner of St Michael only discovered the difference after they deployed. The need to expire in battle was seen as poor recompense in place of their expectations.

  The papal host was not yet falling apart; that would be too much to hope for. Yet it was, according to what they could discern, riddled with a degree of discontent. The pontiff must be aware of this for such matters would be constantly brought to his attention. Sitting in his Avignon palace, was Pope Innocent contemplating the possibility that his forces might disintegrate if the siege went on too long?

  ‘Which means,’ Sterz concluded, once these matters had been fully aired, ‘that if we have difficulties, so does he. The question is, how do we act?’

  ‘You sense it is time to talk, Captain General?’ asked Cunradus to a Sterz nod. ‘It is worthy of consideration.’

  As the council had progressed, aware as he had been previously that Cunradus often inadvertently gave away things he would prefer were kept hidden, Hawkwood had watched him closely. Yes, he had kept his expression bland, except for a kind of false and occasional curiosity. But the very lack of reaction to important points aired was a good indication of him and Sterz having had a prior discussion.

  The whole point of this council, he suspected, had been solely to arrive at the present conclusion. There was no intrinsic objection to this: Sterz was the leader and in that post it was incumbent upon him to provide guidance. If it needed a monk to point him in the right direction, so be it. If anything, Hawkwood had a sneaking admiration for Cunradus and his methods, which often got a consensus among his captains without rancour or dispute.

  ‘I sense the time is coming,’ Sterz replied, ‘though I think it unwise to be the one to move first.’

  Three weeks passed and it was not until the Feast Day of St Andrew that a herald arrived from Pope Innocent asking that his emissary, the Marquis of Monferrato, be allowed to enter Pont-Saint-Esprit in order to convey to the apostates his thinking on the present state of the siege.

  ‘With a possible remission of our excommunication,’ Sterz pronounced, not that it was necessary: all his captains had heard the exchange between the messenger and their leader. ‘It was put in subtle fashion but it was there nevertheless.’

  ‘In essence, he is offering us our lives,’ Cunradus added. ‘The question must be, is that sufficient?’

  ‘An opening gambit, surely,’ growled Francis the Belge, loudly overcoming the babble of talk. ‘He must be willing to part with more.’

  ‘Let us listen to his marquis and see,’ Hawkwood responded, to general agreement.

  He had other concerns that impinged on what was awaited; Aalis had produced a lusty boy child, to be named William. Should the anathema be lifted he could be properly baptised and without any future queries as to its validity, which made him eager to see what the Marquis of Monferrato had to say.

  The named nobleman crossed the Rhone Bridge in style, the river beneath him now a torrent of Alpine snowmelt, escorted by a party of lances in fine if peaceful livery. He himself rode his white palfrey, holding reins through which ran gold thread, covered in a cloak bedecked with jewels and trimmed with ermine. The men he encountered when the gate opened to receive him were much less fine in their accoutrements, seeing no need to don finery – indeed most lacked any such garments – in order to receive this high-born Italian.

  If anything many lining the road to the bishop’s palace wished to demonstrate an opposite appearance: they were ruffians and would so dress, but that could not apply to their captains, who would treat with Monferrato. They took unaccustomed trouble to appear his equal, knowing they had failed when, divested of his cloak, he showed a fitted, waisted jacket with full sleeves and pearls for decoration, legs encased in tight hose and the points on his footwear rising to curl over his toes. This was court dress of the latest fashion; routiers could not match it even with stolen country finery.

  Sterz had decided to occupy the bishop’s throne, but did not take it himself until his visitor was seated. If the Great Company captains felt they were tyros in what was coming, they nevertheless knew that much of what went on would be by gesture as much as speech. Thus, Sterz waiting to take the throne, while his captains remained standing, was designed to tell Monferrato that they were very willing to listen.

  Hawkwood thought if he were tempted to draw an Italian nobleman Monferrato would fit the bill as a sitter. He had dark skin but with a parchment look to it, as though the lines that marked age would never dare to show, for he was no youth and well past being fully grown. Black hair lacking in lustre framed a face dominated by a hooked nose and a set of narrow lips with a downward curve at the edges, the way they twitched the only indication of a reaction to a point made.

  Speculation on his Monferrato title, taken from a town and castle overlooking the River Po, might lead all the way back to the ancients, for the topmost families of Italy tended to a long history and had been able to hang onto their lands and grandeur throughout endless changes of governance: Goths, Byzantium, Lombards, imperial interventions from the north and a rapacious papacy required an ability to always manoeuvre to be on the winning side. The marquis was a scion of such an inheritance, now the Imperial Vicar of Piedmont and Lord of Turin.

  ‘His Holiness requires that you quit his much-loved diocese of Pont-Saint-Esprit, the occupation of which mightily wounds him.’ A soft voice, non-threatening, but to be guarde
d against for all its silkiness. ‘In order that this should be so, he offers to lift the double anathema placed upon you and would be willing to let you depart with your arms.’

  ‘No.’

  Monferrato was shocked at the lack of diplomacy, unaware that not only the answer but the method of response had been earlier decided upon. None present had ever partaken in this kind of negotiation but it had been agreed that if they lacked experience it was no use hiding it, for to do so would surrender the initiative to the Pope. Best be blunt with no subtle mediation, which reflected the nature of their company.

  ‘You reject this?’

  The look of surprise, arched black eyebrows topped by deep-furrowed skin, looked contrived to Hawkwood and he gazed round his confrères to see if they thought the same. Thornbury and Jonzac were smiling and so was Baldwin. The Belge looked as if he was angry at such a paltry opening offer. Leofrick appeared confused, but then he usually did.

  ‘We do.’

  ‘Signor Sterz, the Pope has decided to be magnanimous.’

  ‘Then as his envoy it is your task to return to him and tell him his magnanimity is insufficient.’ Sterz stood, which was as good as saying the talking was over and so soon. ‘If you have no more, Marquis, I invite you to dine with us before you depart.’

  This too was a ploy. In another chamber the great table had been laid in preparation for a feast. The leading citizens, those who had managed to hang on to flagons of fine wine, had been forced, one or two brutally, to give up their precious possessions. Beef had been hung in preparation, mutton slaughtered and birds plucked and stuffed. The servants of the bishop had good livery and were accustomed to serve at such a board and would be especially efficient on pain of punishments unspecified. Thus the Marquis of Monferrato sat down to a banquet to compare with anything served in his own castle, or indeed within a papal palace famed for its gastronomy.