by David Gilman
Blackstone was three paces to Meulon’s side as the Norman rammed his shield against the burning palisades. The flames scorched his beard. He cursed and brought his shield arm up to wipe his whiskers. A French pikeman loomed over the palisade to one side and rammed his halberd down towards Meulon’s hunched shoulders. The fifteen-foot shaft – a lethal weapon in the open fields of battle – was too unwieldy to be effective at close quarters. The eighteen-inch blade scraped across Meulon’s helm, but the spike’s tip caught the mail coif that protected his neck, which gave Blackstone the chance to strike first the pole and then the man. As Wolf Sword severed the haft, Blackstone’s shield smashed into the helpless pikeman, who fell forward. He floundered, trying to draw his sword, but Blackstone was already thrusting Wolf Sword’s point into his chest. Blackstone stepped on the corpse and fought his way across the palisades into the troops who had hoped the pikemen would have bought them time and taken more English lives. Choking smoke caught men’s throats and eyes but those that saw the surge of Blackstone’s men turned and ran for the protection that the next ditch offered.
French crossbowmen brought down half a dozen men. One of the men-at-arms who had forced himself between Meulon and Blackstone went down with a crossbow bolt through his helm. It struck with a dull thud as it pierced steel and bone. At close range the crossbows were lethal whether a man wore armour or not. Blackstone felt a quarrel thump into his shield, its lethal tip protruding close to his arm. John Jacob was at his side, unscathed as he slashed away at the defenders. Though determined, they were no match in the open for Blackstone’s men. The ditch held men in a tight slit of earth that hampered blows, so men had to grapple with bare fists. Kicking and screaming they wrestled each other. French and English curses were spat with blood. Helmets cleaved beneath axe and sword; legs fell severed, leaving ragged stumps and bewildered men in shock soon to yield to death from blood loss or an enemy’s blade. Men’s faces rose, gasping for breath, exposing parched throats; Englishmen with knives slit cartilage and bone and turned their own faces away from spurting blood.
The Prince of Wales had led his assault against the village three hundred yards to Blackstone’s flank. Those who had left their retreat too late ran before his men’s swords. The English hacked into anyone who was not fast enough to clear the narrow streets or who turned begging for mercy.
The smoke blew clear for a few seconds and Blackstone saw the defensive trenches ahead had been reinforced with fresh troops determined to stop the English advance before they reached the monastery. Blackstone knew he and the men would be hard pressed to clamber up and over more ditches without suffering greater losses than they had already endured.
‘The flag!’ Blackstone yelled. ‘Now!’
The enemy crossbowmen were fifty yards away, their positions briefly exposed by the shifting smoke. Now that Blackstone could see them he ordered his bannermen to raise his pennons and mark their location.
‘Thirty yards, Will,’ he had instructed his centenar before the attack. ‘When you see my flag you rain death down on these bastards thirty yards ahead of my flag. Anything less and you slaughter us. Mark the distance well. And if you see me bring two pennons to the centre then you will need to have your archers mark their flight only paces ahead. Our lives are in your hands, Will, should that happen.’
No sooner had the pennons been raised along the line of advancing men than a rustling quivered overhead like wind through leaves. The hail of arrows fell between Blackstone’s men and the strongly defended trenches fifty yards ahead.
‘Shit!’ said Gaillard as they peered over the ditch. The harvest of arrows prickled the ground. ‘Sir Thomas, he needs to shoot closer.’
‘Aye,’ said Meulon. ‘Let’s take him nearer.’
Blackstone nodded. ‘Pennons! To me! Meulon, Gaillard, come on!’
The three men, bigger than any other among them, raised their shields and clambered up the face of the ditch. They ran shoulder to shoulder, their shields side by side, raised and extended to their front to protect against quarrels. One of the flag bearers ran with them but not close enough to the men in front. He fell, hit by three quarrels. John Jacob crawled across the top of the trench. He rolled and crawled five yards, and then stood and jigged left and right as he lofted the pennon and caught up with Blackstone and the other flag bearer.
‘Raise both pennons!’ Blackstone ordered.
‘Merciful Christ, I hope Longdon has marked his distances well,’ said Killbere as he caught up, and hunched down as John Jacob waved the pennon across his body, then followed Blackstone and the others’ example as they crouched behind their shields. They were too close to the enemy lines. One quarrel punched through and struck Meulon on the shoulder, but his armour deflected its tip. The force of the strike twisted his body, creating a gap that exposed the three men who led the advance. They were barely twenty paces from the French lines and had seconds to live before the crossbowmen reloaded and fired again. They were saved by a swarm of arrow shafts that thudded down almost upon them. The closest fell a body length in front of their faces. The sudden shock of the bodkin-tipped shafts struck the dirt with such force the goose feathers quivered. Meulon cursed. That self-same arrow could have slammed between his own shoulder blades. He glanced at Blackstone, expecting a similar expletive to escape his lips, but instead Blackstone was smiling. He was enjoying the archers’ skill, remembering when he too could place a yard-long shaft into such a small killing area. Such feelings never left a man weaned on an archer’s war bow. Meulon began to rise but Blackstone snatched at his arm and held him back.
‘One more, Meulon! Don’t move!’
The ground to their front thudded again. The second volley loosed from near enough two hundred paces to their rear was the enemy’s death knell. The French fell screaming, the last chance their crossbowmen had to stop the advance suddenly thwarted. No sooner had the lethal storm fallen than Blackstone and the two Normans got to their feet and ran into the stragglers. They jumped down into the ditch and began the killing. The men followed, bellowing to bolster their own courage and to put the fear of the Almighty into their enemy. The French braced themselves for the onslaught but were already dying underfoot as the two Norman captains struck down the smaller men. Blackstone had given chase to the retreating troops, forcing the French from their defensive positions around the front of the church, and those that retreated now made a final stand between church and town walls. That narrow gap would let them hold out longer. These French had reached the priory gates, which Blackstone knew would open long enough to let the soldiers in. John Jacob yelled for men to follow as he raced after Blackstone. The gates barely allowed fifty French troops in before being almost closed leaving thirty or more men abandoned. By the time John Jacob and the men caught up with Blackstone he had already barged into a half-dozen men with a fury that strangled the screams in their throats. Their bodies fell between gate and frame, stopping those inside from fully closing the portal. Those who were left outside, weary with fatigue and fear, could not muster the strength to fight on and their resistance quickly crumbled beneath Blackstone’s men’s assault.
A dozen men put their shoulders to the gate and Blackstone squeezed through the gap. He pulled back moments before two crossbowmen loosed their bolts, which slammed into the wood next to his chest. And then he was inside. It was very much like the convent he had visited. The French had no ramparts, so they had barricaded rooms with benches and stools and formed a shield wall, with spears poking through to keep swordsmen at bay. The two crossbowmen had run for the cover of the cloisters. More men pushed through the gates behind Blackstone, saw the shield wall and ran at it. They half jumped, half rammed it. Boots and shields hammered at it until it cracked like an egg on one side and Blackstone’s men stormed through.
He stood to one side allowing their blood-lust to carry them onward without him.
As the close-quarter fighting continued against pockets of resistance he gazed across the courtyard garde
ns. The monks had planted a small orchard, not unlike the one he once had at home. There were no more than a dozen trees, perhaps to give them a few sweet apples in the spring. The blossoms had emerged, white against the grey sky and dark stone walls. Beneath the trees small thumb-sized flowers with colourful wax-like petals had forced themselves free of the earth, resurrected after winter. As the clash of fighting and screams of dying men echoed down the colonnades Blackstone sat on a low stone wall and pulled free his helmet.
The orchard would soon be destroyed, the flowers trampled.
He wanted the pleasure of it for a few moments longer.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The killing did not abate for hours as King Edward’s troops scorched through village and town in a merciless rampage. Blackstone pulled back his men once the religious house used as a garrison had been secured. His men drank what wine they could and scavenged food not taken by the French from the priory’s kitchens. Bloodied and exhausted they sat or lay at the priory walls sluicing sweat and blood from their faces and hands and aiding each other to dress their wounds. A few had died but the cost had been slight thanks to Will Longdon and his archers. Blackstone sent word for his archers to join them and to leave Henry with the other pages at the baggage train. He and his men-at-arms cleaned their weapons. They had done as expected and claimed the garrison; now it was up to the Prince and his men to sweep through his flank and push aside the few stubborn defenders at the suburb’s walls.
Blackstone waited with his men at the gates as the English swarmed forward in another attack. Those villagers who had fled into the nearby church for protection no longer had the garrison troops to defend them, and although Frenchmen still held their ground around the church and suburban walls it was obvious the English would soon be among them. Cries of surrender from those in the church could be heard across the killing field. For a moment Blackstone thought the villagers had a chance. As the first few ventured out, stepping fearfully in front of the Prince of Wales’s men, women and children shuffling behind their menfolk kept up a constant plea for mercy. The Prince’s commanders halted their men a few hundred paces from the church.
The attack came from behind, from the very men who were supposed to protect the villagers. French troops, crying ‘Traitors!’ suddenly launched themselves at those surrendering. Stricken, the villagers panicked and ran back into the church. The English held back as the French did their work for them by setting fire to the sanctuary. Smoke suddenly appeared; it took only a short time for flames to take hold. The shrieks of the dying soared above the noise of fighting beyond the church. Blackstone and the men watched as villagers jumped from the windows, bones shattering when they hit the stony ground. Some lowered ropes and began climbing out. By the time the roof was ablaze Blackstone thought there were three hundred or more people below the walls, huddling uncertain which way to turn, although hundreds more must have still been trapped inside the burning building. Children cried for their mothers and women screamed for mercy. The men called out, arms raised; some fell to their knees in front of the English host before them as their countrymen, who had tried to kill them, retreated slowly back into the suburbs they were sworn to defend.
The English waited until those beneath the church walls began to shuffle away. And then they attacked and slaughtered them all.
Killbere eased his aching body up from where he sat in the dirt and gave a final wipe of his sword’s bloodied blade before sliding it back into the scabbard.
‘Come, Thomas. Let’s be away from here. The Prince will want to celebrate his glorious victory. We’ll all get pissed elsewhere. Let’s find a tavern that has enough wine left to swill that shame from our throats.’
Blackstone and Killbere led the men into the burning suburbs. The walls of Paris were less than a mile ahead. Merchants’ and peasants’ houses alike were gutted and ransacked by those soldiers who had gone ahead of them but somewhere there would be an alehouse left standing. Which he and his men would not be by the time darkness fell.
*
The stench of burnt thatch and the dead wafted with the smoke from the burning suburbs. Bodies lay in the streets alongside slaughtered animals. The tavern Blackstone’s men found had been a roadside inn before the killing started; now it was half destroyed, the doors ripped from their hinges and the windows smashed. The ceiling had been pulled down by soldiers most likely searching for hidden loot. Broken tables and benches lay strewn across the floor along with smashed glass, clay pots and empty half-barrels.
Meulon pulled aside the butchered bodies of the innkeeper and his wife who lay in front of the empty casks.
‘Perhaps he served bad ale or gave short measures,’ said Renfred.
Another woman lay spreadeagled in the corner, her clothing pulled above her bloodied waist, her head lying crooked to one side, her glassy eyes still open. She had been dead for hours.
‘Most likely their daughter,’ said Killbere, glancing back to the middle-aged innkeeper and his wife. Gaillard crossed himself and lowered the girl’s dress and then carried her body outside where he laid her next to three slaughtered dogs and a horse. Nothing had been spared. There would be no burials that day, and by the time any survivors dared creep back there would be little left of her.
Will Longdon and Jack Halfpenny dragged aside a man’s corpse and beneath it found the trapdoor to the cellar. Expecting people to be hiding there he went down into the darkness bearing a knife in one hand and a flickering candle in another. He emerged with Halfpenny and two wooden boxes of dark glass bottles swaddled in straw.
‘Stupid bastards just killed the innkeeper and pissed away the wine in them barrels. This is where they should have looked.’
The bottles were shared among the men as Thurgood and a few others came back from foraging. Victoriously they carried a large round cheese and a smoked ham.
‘All we need now are some women and we can celebrate,’ said Thurgood.
‘Aye. I’m not sure what, though,’ said Killbere.
‘Being alive is enough,’ said Blackstone, and raised the bottle to his lips. The sharp brandy cut across his throat.
They stayed at the inn and spread out into the stables and barns. There was enough straw left to use for bedding and what remained of the roof gave some shelter from the drizzling rain. As the men ate and drank and then found a place to lie, a contingent of eighty or so English troops made their way towards them. Led by a banner knight, their clothing and faces were streaked with blood and smudged with soot. When the knight saw Blackstone’s men he demanded: ‘Get off your arses. There’s more killing to be done.’
Will Longdon was sitting with his archers stuffing a piece of ham into his mouth. He raised his eyebrows at Halfpenny and washed down the meat with a slug from the brandy bottle. The knight scowled and looked about him, unused to being ignored. Meulon and Gaillard lay propped against a wall; the other men-at-arms sprawled here and there. Some raised their heads but then immediately went back to dozing.
‘You men will come with me! On your feet!’ demanded the knight.
‘Fuck off!’ a voice called from inside the inn.
The knight sidestepped his way past the indifferent men into the tavern. Blackstone and Killbere sat on a bench, helmets at their side, scraps of the cheese and ham on the rough-hewn table in front of them. They each nursed a bottle. In a corner John Jacob sat sharpening a knife blade. To the knight they looked no different than the men-at-arms who lounged outside. They wore no armour and were dressed piecemeal. Brigands perhaps, he thought, paid by the King.
‘You scum will do as you’re ordered,’ he said. Half a dozen of his men had crowded behind him in support.
‘And I said you can fuck off,’ said Killbere. ‘Now get back to your slaughter of the innocents before I ram my sword up your arse.’
Blackstone spat phlegm at the feet of the knight. ‘My friend is more drunk than sober and that makes him doubly dangerous. I would obey him if I were you.’
The
knight had not recognized Blackstone’s smudged blazon and he took a step forward, grasping his sword hilt, half drawing the blade in threat. Killbere lunged, grabbing his helm from the bench at his side and smashing it into the man’s face. He fell back into the men behind him, teeth shattered, jaw broken. The shocked men immediately drew their weapons but Blackstone already had Wolf Sword in his hand and John Jacob was at his side, knife at the ready.
‘This could be your day of glory. Who among you would challenge Sir Gilbert Killbere?’ said Blackstone.
Killbere had already flopped back onto the bench and raised the bottle again but the men’s uncertainty was plain to see. Killbere’s reputation in the army, especially among the veterans, might well have been chiselled in stone. The men pushed their blades back into their scabbards. One of them, older and more grizzled-looking than the others, gestured for those next to him to drag the unconscious knight away.
‘My lord, I serve this knight, Sir Oswald de Chambres. We beg your forgiveness.’
Blackstone lowered his sword. The knight’s name meant nothing to him and he had not recognized his colours. He was just one of hundreds of knights in the army. ‘Take him and find a surgeon to bind his jaw.’
‘Aye, and tell him to learn some goddamned manners,’ Killbere added.
The grizzled man-at-arms bowed his head in acknowledgement. ‘I would not dare, Sir Gilbert. My lord is a favourite of the Prince.’
‘Well, he’s no favourite of mine,’ said Killbere and waved the men away. The sound of Blackstone’s men jeering de Chambres’s retreating soldiers reached into the inn.
Blackstone sighed. ‘God’s blood, Gilbert, did you have to go so hard at him?’
‘He was an arrogant little shit. He needed to be taught a lesson. I swear, Thomas, some of the so-called knights that ride with the Prince must lick his arse every morning. Who wants men like that around them?’ He tossed aside the bottle. ‘Let’s get back to the lines before more of his kind come looking to murder babes in arms. I pray this devastation spurs the Dauphin to let loose his army. Let’s get at them. What kind of man is he to let his people die unprotected? A hundred troops or more in a garrison, a handful in the suburbs who turn on their own kind. The Holy Virgin’s tears wouldn’t be enough to wash away such a sin of neglect.’ He stretched his aching body and steadied himself on the edge of the table. ‘I’m pissed. Let’s get back. This place reeks of shame from both sides of the damned walls.’ Blackstone reached out to steady him but Killbere snatched his arm free. ‘I stand on my own two feet, Thomas. For a while longer at least.’