Three Lions of England
Patrick Cinnamond
© Patrick Cinnamond 2017
Patrick Cinnamond has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2017.
Table of Contents
Prologue
I
II
III
IV
Part One
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
Part Two
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
Part Three
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
Part Four
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
IXX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
Epilogue
I
II
III
Author’s Note
Timeline
Prologue
The King came courteously to greet Reason.
He sat him between himself and his son on the benches,
And they conversed gravely for a great while together.
Then Peace came to Parliament and proffered his charges.
Against his will, Wrong took his wife from him,
And ravished her. “His prowlers prey on pigs and ganders,
I am so filled with fear that I dare not fight with him,
I bear no silver … he watches well when I have money.
When I am plodding on the path he is prying about
Or robs me and rifles me if I ride softly …
He maintains his men in murdering my servants;
He forestalls my fairs; he fights in my markets;
He breaks down my barn door; bears off my provisions …
More than this, he beats me, and lies with my servant;
Because of him I have hardly the courage to seek justice.”
*
The King credited his words, for Conscience told him
That Wrong was a wicked man who brought woe to many.
*
Piers Plowman by William Langland, Passus IV, 47-70 (circa 1377)
I
Normandy, the Kalends of May, in the Year of Our Lord, 1376
Bastard Knolles had assigned Wat and his lance of eight men to be the vanguard for the whole damned column of plunder wagons, all the way to Calais, along a road infamous for ambushes.
It had been a pissing down morning, skies grey as death, but at noon the sun launched a sally, routed the clouds. Since then, all had been the hiss of crickets, and rolling in the saddle, clip-clop dozing in the heat.
Wat basked his face in the May sun. The Frenchies had a better sun; the rays tanned the skin, heated the blood and warmed the marrow in the bones. Fucking Frenchies! He’d give them that.
The last thing the vanguard wanted to hear on the road was the pounding of hooves.
Three or more horses, full gallop, a fearful rhythm attacking the beat of Wat’s heart, quickening his breathing. His own charger snorted, scenting war or sex, getting uppity either way. He hooded his head in coif and ventails, lifted his basinet from the pommel of the saddle and clipped it onto his head – suffocating dark – until he flipped the visor open. ‘Heavy horse coming in, Jack. Look lively lads!’
Jack Straw, Wat’s second-in-command, sighed deeply. ‘The devil strikes like a roaring lion.’
Wat gave him a hard stare. ‘You drop Bible babblings like dung, you do.’
‘I should have been a priest.’
‘Step to it, Father Jack.’
‘Yes, Serjeant. Right away, Serjeant.’ Jack slid out of his saddle. It wasn’t far to go to reach the ground – he was as tall as the withers on his seventeen-hand warhorse. Giant Jack made good use of the extra height God had gifted him. He was an archer and the six foot six black yew stave he’d bought from a Greek and cured back home was as tall and straight as him. He strung the war bow with hemp cord, took a white-fledged arrow from his bag and nocked it. All the movements were grooved by decades of practice at the butts and on the battlefield, he didn’t even have to think, and like as not hundreds of strides away a man would die.
Three riders galloped round the sharp bend, a league off, heading straight for the vanguard.
Jack took aim, down the road. At thirty-eight, his eyesight wasn’t as sharp as it had once been, he wouldn’t be shaming any falcons, but he saw red and that was enough. English colours. Relieved he didn’t even have to haul the string back, he lowered the bow and slotted the arrow back into his bag. ‘They’re ours!’
Wat let out a sigh of relief, slotted his glaive back into its holder. He clicked off the helmet and took a deep breath in the sunshine.
As the three English serjeants, rattling plate armour, thundered up to a halt, Wat’s charger brayed and stamped, lashed out a front-strike. He reined the stallion in tight, jabbed it in the ribs with his spurs, into a wheel. It was a five-year-old, horny bastard, given to breakneck bouts of trying to mount other horses, mares or otherwise, rider-less or otherwise. Shagged to death by a stallion, not a nice fate for anyone, even Knolles. Although, there was a thought.
Wat stared at the white foam on the horse’s flanks. ‘Working up quite a lather there lads. What’s got you so hot and bothered?’
‘The usual,’ the lead rider, a Serjeant Baker, said. ‘Fucking Frenchies.’
Wat laughed. ‘Fucking Frenchies.’
Serjeant Baker laughed. He liked this serjeant right away, he decided. War might have cut deep into that face; a scar ran from forehead to chin, through his left eyebrow, and that nose had been broken, more than once, but the fellow’s eyes were bright with wit. ‘Where is your captain? I need a word.’
‘He is all the way back with his plunder,’ Wat answered. ‘Follow my lads. We’ll see you right.’ He turned his charger, forced it to walk back along the road, with its cock slapping its sides.
Jack pointed at the hunching-up stallion. ‘That randy sod’s got a stiffy again, Wat.’
Wat laughed. ‘Life is hard.’
II
‘This good fellow is Serjeant Baker, from Abbeville,’ Wat announced. ‘Good fellow, meet Sir Robert Knolles.’
‘Good day to you, Sir Robert,’ Serjeant Baker said. ‘We are from the castle at Abbeville. A column of Frenchies are advancing on us with canon and siege towers. We need reinforcements.’
�
�I am sorry, Serjeant,’ Sir Robert said. ‘I am charged by the Duke of Lancaster to see these wagons make Calais by tomorrow.’
Wat shook his head in disgust. Knolles was a fifty-year-old fake. People back home hailed him a great hero: Londoners told stories of his exploits in the tavern named after him – the Sir Robert Knolles Inn – and sang ballads to honour his victories at Poitiers and Najera when he didn’t even fight at Poitiers.
Knolles, the ignoble condottiere, who had risen from the ranks in the infamous White Company.
Knolles, who had fought in the Tournament of the Thirty, been wounded, captured, and ransomed.
Knolles, who had won his spurs by cunning, not valour, and placed a ransom price of one hundred thousand moutons on his own head – literally, it was inscribed on the bastard’s helmet!
Knolles, Knolles, Canolles, ‘the Hammer of the Frenchies’, the sacker of towns, villes, the killer of innocents.
Knolles, the Black Prince’s right hand, the King’s one true bandit, now the favourite of ‘King John of Castile’, the Prime Regent, pretender to the throne.
If only they knew the real man under all that armour, small, pink, wrinkled thing that he was, lived without a shred of honour. Who would let Abbeville – guarding the site of the battle of Crecy, where a handful of English archers destroyed the flower of Frenchie chivalry and captured their king – fall into enemy hands?
‘Would you at least spare us some men, Sir, or we will be overrun in days?’ Serjeant Baker’s voice was tight, almost boyish, as it escaped from his grizzled grey-beard.
Sir Robert looked to Master Serjeant Lyons.
The old war dog took the cue, answering gruffly for him: ‘We can spare you none, son.’
Serjeant Baker was crestfallen. ‘We have been ordered to hold at all costs.’
‘Then God be with you.’ Sir Robert offered the poor wretch a grim smile. He was not entirely unsympathetic. They were losing the war. Wrong strategy. Wrong tactics. Wrong leader. The King was senile and doddery, mad with age; Edward, the Black Prince, was at death’s door. And all the while so-called ‘King John of Castile’, the feckless Duke of Lancaster, charged over Normandy in chevauchée after chevauchée, pillaging everything, but avoiding pitched battles at all cost, the French were systematically taking back all the keeps that had been hard-won over the decades of the war. What could one do as a mere banneret? A nobleman had to learn when to act and when to hold off, if he was to better his lot in this life, and more importantly, that of his heirs.
‘I’ll take my lance,’ Wat said, nodding to the Abbeville serjeants.
‘Expressly, no,’ Sir Robert said, feeling the enmity of the doomed Abbeville serjeants, and his own men. He shrugged it off. There was no shame in this, no guilt. He was merely enforcing military discipline. Without it, chaos reigned. ‘We have our orders, Serjeant. They have theirs.’
Wat ignored Knolles. ‘We’ll cut the Frenchies up, stall them, buy these lads some time to send for new orders.’
‘Like hell you will, Serjeant,’ Sir Robert said, lapsing into his old Kentish accent in anger. ‘You are under my command!’
‘These are my men, they signed to me.’ Wat turned to his eight-man lance. ‘What do you say, lads? There might even be a prize in it for us.’
Jack and the four archers nodded, shook fists, up for it.
The three serjeants-at-arms shrugged – why not. Honour aside, the slightest prospect of capturing a Frenchie noble and holding them to ransom was impossible to refuse.
‘That’s settled then,’ Wat said. ‘Mount up!’
Sir Robert stood up in his stirrups and pointed at Tyler. ‘I order you to stand down.’
‘With all due respect, sir,’ Wat said, ‘this is not right.’
‘Wat is right,’ Jack chipped in. ‘These are our brothers. If we forsake them in their hour of need what manner of Englishmen would we be?’
‘My patience is at an end!’ Sir Robert jabbed a finger at Tyler. ‘Master Serjeant, place Tyler under arrest.’
Master Serjeant Lyons drew his falchion. ‘Sorry, Wat. You heard the man.’
‘What’s the bloody charge?’ Jack demanded. ‘Courage?’
‘To state the bloody obvious …’ Sir Robert yelled at Tyler, ‘… insubordination!’
‘Begging your pardon,’ Wat said, and geed his charger away from Master Serjeant Lyons, kicking gobbets of dirt up at his face. ‘Come on lads. To war!’
Sir Robert bawled at Master Serjeant Lyons: ‘If the French don’t butcher him, flog him the minute he returns, hear me!’
III
A breeze with ambitions to be a wind rustled through a hilltop copse of beeches, tousling the two tufts of Wat’s blonde hair that weren’t matted to his scalp with sweat. He stood at the fringe of the wood with Jack and Serjeant Baker, reconnoitring the enemy – a hundred and seventy strides away downhill. Through the vivid green leaves he watched the Frenchie captain, herald flying the Fleur-de-lis, leading a full battle, siege towers and canon, up the vale below.
‘That’s the Count of Poitiers,’ said Serjeant Baker, jabbing his finger at the Frenchie captain.
‘Should have stayed home, counted his blessings,’ Wat said. The coat of arms on the captain’s shield and surcoat – a red lion rampant on white, was the same as Richard the Lionheart’s. Or, if you wanted to say it fancy – Argent, a lion rampant, gules. He and Jack had made a great study of Frenchie heraldry for the purposes of ransoming the rich fuckers back to their relatives. It had made them both wealthy men. Courtesy of his old master, the late Earl of Buckingham, he had been able to buy a whole farm in Kent, the Garden of England, with his share of the fatty Duke of Anjou. Jack had drunk Gascony dry with his share, caught weeping cock-rot in the brothels of London, and bought a leasehold tenement in his hometown of Maidstone.
‘The Count would make a nice prize,’ Jack said. ‘Keep me in wine and fanny for an eternity one hundred thousand ducats would.’
Wat shot him a look that would curdle milk. ‘In case you didn’t notice, we are outnumbered a hundred to one.’
Serjeant Baker said: ‘We thank you for your help this day, Serjeant Tyler.’
‘Do not thank us yet,’ Jack said. ‘You have not seen us fight. We’re hopeless, we are.’
Wat nodded. ‘Let’s hope we slow them and the reinforcements come.’
‘It is all in God’s hands,’ Serjeant Baker shrugged. He had despatched a rider to ask for new orders or a relief army to lift the siege. ‘Ready yourself, lad.’ The remaining Abbeville serjeant adjusted his grip on his shield and lance, face ashen as the blood pumped to his heart and hands. Battle did this to a man.
‘Right lads,’ said Wat. ‘Fill the shower round the standard with six arrows each. Then we charge the standard. Hit and run. We seize the Count – if we can. If not, it’s back up the road all the way back to our lot.’
A stinging worm of sweat ran down Wat’s back. He stretched his hamstrings, which for some sodding reason always shortened tighter and tenser before a fight, quivering with fear and fury. Then he helped young Thomas of Berwick fight a losing battle with one of his ill-fitting greaves – one of the straps was shagged so it was hanging off. Same old story: good strong English lad, crap armour ripped off dead Frenchies. The Frenchies had better armour. There was no bleeding arguing against that.
Jack looped hemp string over the tip of the stave, bowed it with a huge heave, looped the other end. ‘I’m thinking two swallowtails, four bodkins,’ he told the lads. Swallowtails meant they’d be sticking horses as well as men; they were wicked with barbs. He examined arrows for warps in the shafts, fluffed the grey goose feather flights, selected the best of the bag.
Wat fed his charger a treat of oats, and it lipped them up, ground them down, munching the bit. When his men were sorted he gave the order: ‘Mount up.’
On hands and knees, Jack led the four archers out of the trees. He staked the bodkins and swallowtails into the ground and leapt to his feet.
Jack and his lads darted back into the cover of the trees to mount up.
Down below, an arrow missed its mark, hitting a rider rather than his mount. No less than the Count de Poitiers took the bodkin in the chest, the narrow steel barb punching through his Milanese plate armour and his ribcage, the force of the impact propelling him off his destrier and into the mud of the road. No ransom would save him from the Grim Reaper’s harvest.
The herald’s horse was stuck by two swallowtails in the flank, penetrating the blue trapper and sending it berserk, spinning, bucking off its rider, trampling the curled ball of him senseless.
A young squire was maimed through the arm and wailed to his maman in agony as his armour pulsed red gouts.
By the siege tower, a serjeant’s leg got crushed under his collapsed destrier. He struggled gamely to wrest his broken leg free of the weight, then the pain hit and he screamed like a woman at the full-crown of her labour.
Panic ripped through the rest of the French. Their Genoese crossbowmen squinted under their palms to see where the arrows had been shot from, where the hated English archers were. It had to be the wood on the hill. They struggled to ratchet back the strings on their bows while their shield-bearers did the job of protecting them with pavises. It would take precious minutes, too long.
Eyes full of battle, Wat spurred his charger into action, driving through the low-sweeping branches. ‘St George!’ he cried. His eight men and the Abbeville lads galloped out with him, out of the copse, down the hillock, full tilt, training, kicking in, wedging together into a tiny, deadly wedge of lances and swords. A conroi of sorts.
Wat drove the tip of his glaive into a flailing serjeant and skewered him into kingdom come. He had to leave the glaive in there. It was a piece of shit, a lance with no bastarding baffle. He drew his hand-and-a-half sword and hacked down at scattering Frenchies with it, roaring with an unearthly rage, trying to see where the blasted Count of Poitiers had got to, but merely battering a few dents and dings into helmets and plate armour. Then through the chaos of Frenchies, he saw the Count and his herald, lying dead as could be, and cursed Jack.
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