The Half-Hanged Man

by David Pilling

  And so it did, and hard on the heels of winter came the Wolf.

  3.

  As I predicted, the negotiations at Poitiers failed, and the proposal for splitting the Duchy rejected. Montfort was all for it, but Charles de Blois, that proud idiot, refused to even entertain the notion. He compounded the insult by refusing to speak to his rival directly, and both factions departed from Poitiers threatening war and shaking their fists at each other. The Prince of Wales was left to reflect that he made a far better soldier than a diplomat, and turned his attention back to screwing taxes out of his subjects in Aquitaine.

  “Matters are coming to a head, now,” said my chief, Sir John Chandos, rubbing his elegant hands in gleeful anticipation of a slaughter, “the war can’t drag on for another year. Brittany is burned and wasted to exhaustion. One pitched battle will have to settle it.”

  Chandos was an odd beast, one of the most lethal killing gentlemen of my rich and varied acquaintance. For the past thirty years he had done little else but fight, and had been in the thick of every great English victory in France, from Sluys to Crécy to Poitiers. He was a boon companion of the Prince of Wales, and as flamboyant as a knight of such fame and favour can afford to be. He liked to wear a patch made of yellow silk over the socket of his missing eye, (gouged out in some skirmish), slashed doublets embroidered with pearls and images of baboons and angels, and white calfskin gauntlets.

  In person he was tall (though still a head shorter than me) and lean, with a nervous, agitated, dried-up look about him, no doubt thanks to his habit of drinking too much, eating too little, and avoiding sleep whenever possible. Chandos was a man that ever had to be doing. He almost wept with joy when news arrived that hostilities in Brittany had been resumed.

  John de Montfort decided to assault the sea-port of Auray in the diocese of Vannes, which had been in the hands of his Franco-Breton enemies for over twenty years. To that end he gathered a mighty host led by some of the most distinguished and capable captains of that era or any other, including myself, Chandos, Knolles, Sir Olivier de Clisson, Sir Matthew Gournay and Sir Eustace d’Ambreticourt.

  Every night on the march to Auray I prayed that Charles de Blois would send an army to lift the siege, and that Thomas Page and his Wolves would be in the van. My men, fat and bored after long weeks in camp waiting for the spring, were like mastiffs, straining to be let off the leash.

  They had to growl in their kennels a while longer, for we sat outside Auray for eight weary months. All our efforts to reduce the place by bombardment or escalade or starvation came to naught, hardly surprising since the garrison were supplied by sea, and their numbers and fortifications were more than adequate to repel our assaults. Still, Montfort was resolved to conquer the place, and its walls could not hold against our cannons and bombards forever.

  “I mean to sit outside Auray until Charles finally screws up the courage to march to its aid,” Montfort informed his captains at supper one night, “that will precipitate the battle we all long for. Afterwards there shall be no more talk of splitting the Duchy. Brittany shall be united under its rightful Duke at last, and Charles de Blois shall have what he so richly deserves.”

  “Six feet of earth for his grave,” murmured Knolles, to laughter and approving noises.

  I listened with half an ear. Montfort’s strategy was obvious, and my mind was elsewhere. I had dispensed with Hook’s services, for he was expensive and had other masters to serve, and was relying on rumours and hearsay for my information on Page’s movements. There were wildly varying accounts of the Company of Wolves. Some of the more excitable made them sound like a cross between the Golden Horde and the legions of ancient Rome, but all agreed that their commander had entered the service of Blois.

  At last God woke to my prayers. In the autumn the garrison of Auray, hemmed in and cowering behind their broken walls, offered to surrender if no relief arrived before Michaelmas. We allowed them to send this message to their lord, and within days word reached us that Charles was marching on Auray with three thousand knights and men-at-arms, including Bertrand du Guesclin, the Count of Auxerre, and Thomas Page.

  At the end of September word reached us that Du Guesclin’s division had sailed from Brandivy and landed his troops on the left bank of the river, and was taking up position near the castle. Meanwhile, Charles de Blois was advancing from the direction of Vannes. Not wishing to be cracked like a nut between their two forces, we quit our quarters and re-formed on a slope on the right bank of the river, where we thumbed our noses and spat insults at Du Guesclin’s troops drawn up below the castle.

  Montfort called his captains together. Although he was the titular commander-in-chief, the army was in reality under the direction of Chandos, as the far more experienced and able soldier. He was also a trifle too vain and headstrong, in my view, but I didn’t fret overmuch. Chandos may have been no Hannibal, but he was in a different class to Charles de Blois, whose military career had consisted of losing battles and pretending he had won them.

  Chandos strutted like a peacock before the knights and squires of Brittany, just to let them know their lord had delegated command to an Englishman.

  “Gentleman,” he declared in a loud voice, “it is time that we formed our line of battle, for the enemy have set us the example.”

  Any fool could see the massed array of Franco-Bretons advancing towards us from the direction of Vannes. They marched in close order, in three great battalions of dismounted men-at-arms, splashed across the river, and formed their line of battle on a flat heath below us. The great forest of lances, pennons and streamers stretched from one end of the field to the other, and the warm air was filled by the beat of drums and the screech of clarions. Du Guesclin’s division marched down from their position to join their allies, which surprised me, since he had the advantage of us, and could have savaged our flank while Charles launched a frontal assault.

  I looked eagerly for the Company of Wolves, and spied them in the vanguard. Their young commander was not shy, and his great square banner of a snarling red wolf’s head on a black field was displayed proudly alongside the arms of Blois and Du Guesclin and other principal lords of Brittany and France.

  His Wolves looked capable enough, disciplined and well-equipped with lances, daggers, battle-axes, coats of mail and skull-caps. Each man wore the sigil of a red wolf’s head painted on his breast. I looked for Page himself, and picked out a figure in the middle of their front rank, burly and bare-headed, visored helm tucked under his arm, his long yellow hair gleaming like ripe corn in the brilliant sun.

  My grip tightened on the grip of my sword. “I’ll have your head dangling from my saddle-bow by sundown, Page,” I whispered, “and make a drinking vessel out of your skull.”

  You may have heard that I was given the position of least honour at Auray, the rearguard, and it is true. Chandos divided our main army into three battalions of five hundred men-at-arms and four hundred archers each, and gave me command of the rump, five hundred men.

  I made my displeasure known, in voluble and blasphemous terms, but Chandos was unmoved. “Sir Hugh,” he said quietly when I paused for breath, “you will command the rearguard, as I have instructed, and stay on our wing, without moving, whatever happens, unless in dire emergency. If any of our battalions give way, or are broken, your task is to shore up the line.”

  “Give it to some other, Chandos,” I snarled, “I won’t be your nursemaid today. Put me in the front rank. I have a wolf to kill.”

  He adjusted the set of his eye-patch. “Yes, I heard something of your little blood-feud. I’m astonished that a soldier of your experience could let such a trifling affair affect your judgment. We have a battle to win today, Sir Hugh. I do not give you the rearguard as an insult – rather, the opposite, for you are the best and ablest I have under my command. Do you think I would entrust a position of such responsibility to one of these Breton fools? Obey me, and I shall fulfil any request you make of me when Charles de Blois lies dead at
our feet.”

  Chandos excelled at such pretty speeches, and if he flattered me there was at least some substance to his words. I was the best he had, save perhaps Knolles, but the Old Brigand was not a man you wanted guarding your back. He was too in love with plunder, and liable to go after the baggage while his allies were massacred.

  To the rearguard I went, then, and sat idle at the head of the line on my Flemish destrier, Ram, a huge and heavy beast. She needed to be to carry my weight. I named her so because she was like a battering-ram, slow and nigh-on impossible to turn, but capable of smashing down anything in her path.

  Chandos arranged his three battalions on the ridge in a line, with himself in command of the central battalion, along with Knolles, Sir Walter Huet, and Sir Richard Burley. Olivier de Clisson was in charge of the battalion to his left, and Montfort had the third.

  The Franco-Breton marshals had their men under strict orders not to quit ranks without orders, and the battle would be preceded by none of the usual challenges to single combat. They, too, had formed into three battalions and a rearguard, and thus both armies were set for a grand shoving-match on the plains of Auray, where the fate of Brittany would be decided at last.

  One man, however, had it in his fat head to try and broker a peace, even at this late hour. A certain Breton prisoner in Chandos’s care, the lord Beaumanoir, begged leave to ride between the armies with propositions for peace. To my surprise Chandos agreed. We wasted the hours until noon in diplomacy, while the merciless sun climbed higher into the sky and hung there like a great copper disc, and Beaumanoir pranced back and forth on his white destrier. Incredibly, he managed to negotiate a truce to last for the remainder of the day and the following night.

  Growling and dissatisfied, both armies stood down and retreated to quarters. I watched in futile rage as the wolf’s-head banner of my enemy was furled and carried from the field.

  The peace continued until Sunday. During this time the governor of the castle of Auray was permitted to go out and speak to Charles de Blois, and promptly took a hundred lances with him from the garrison to stiffen the Franco-Breton ranks. Chandos was furious, and the governor’s bad faith, coupled with the pleas of his younger knights, who had no money and desperately needed to make their fortune in ransoms, kindled his fires.

  I was present on Saturday eve when the lord of Beaumanoir, a mild sheep-faced little man, full of sop and piety, went down on one knee before Chandos and begged him to prolong the truce.

  “I entreat of you, Sir John, in the name of God,” he burbled, “that we may bring these two factions to some agreement. It is a great pity that so many good and valiant men should slaughter each other here for no good reason.”

  Chandos had no patience for such talk, and swept Beaumanoir aside.

  “My lord, I advise you to keep your tongue behind the fence of your teeth,” he snapped, in as high a temper as I ever saw him, “else my young knights are like to rip it out. Go to Charles de Blois, and tell him that the Earl de Montfort is determined to risk a trial by battle. Come what may, this day he shall be Duke of Brittany, or die in the field.”

  Our knights and squires within earshot applauded these words. Beaumanoir slunk off, shaking his head at our blood-lust.

  Sunday morning came. Both armies were now resolved on slaughter and arranged themselves into the same positions as the previous day. With one difference: while the masses were being said, I glanced over the field and saw the Wolf’s banner was no longer in the enemy van.

  Despair filled me as I glimpsed it flying over their rearguard. Charles, or Du Guesclin, or some other captain, had obviously decided not to risk the Company of Wolves as front-line troops in what would be their first battle. This was sensible, but it seemed the height of cowardice to me, who wished for nothing more than to meet Page in the thick of the mêlée and feast on his liver.

  Beaumanoir returned with an insolent message from Charles, daring us to come on and engage, for God would settle the right. This brought the colour into Chandos’s hollow cheeks, and he drew his sword and bellowed at his trumpeters:

  “By Saint George, engage I will, and may God settle the issue as He sees fit. Advance, banners!”

  The trumpets screamed, and a great cheer rippled through our ranks as our three battalions advanced in good order down the slope, banners and pennons to the fore.

  I remained at my post at the head of the rearguard, impotent and baking in my black harness, as the contending tides of steel and flesh flowed together on the edge of the plain. There were no clever tactics at Auray. It was a meat-grinder, pure and simple, with the men-at-arms of all six battalions hacking and chopping at each other for mastery of the broad sunlit field.

  Our English and Welsh archers lurked on the flanks, thumbing their arrows uselessly into the ranks of the enemy, where they did little damage against men so well-armed and lapped in metal.

  “Leave off!” I roared, urging Ram a little way down the slope so the archers might hear me, “cast down your bows, and get into them!”

  The bravest heard me – as did the most fearful, though they pretended not to – threw down their bows, and rushed into the thick of the fight. Being lightly-armed, they could dance rings around the lumbering men-at-arms, and were all over them like eager hounds, seizing lances and battle-axes and dragging weapons from their grasp. It was a risky business, and I saw one archer cleaved from scalp to groin by an axe, showering his mates with blood and filth.

  To give him his due, Charles de Blois lacked not for courage. He led his battalion straight at Montfort’s, where both men strove to come to blows. Perhaps it would have been better for them to settle their feud by single combat, but thirteen years of savage warfare had bred too many hatreds and private scores. A fair few were settled in the desperate and severe fighting around the banners of Blois and Montfort. The sawn-off lances stabbed and gouged and the battle-axes rose and fell, crumpling steel and bursting helmets and hacking apart the fragile bodies inside. Fighting became general all across the plain as Olivier de Clisson’s battalion crashed into that led by the Earls of Auxerre and Joigny, and that of Du Guesclin contested matters with that of Chandos.

  All the while, as deeds of horror and heroism were committed, ransoms won and lives lost, I was condemned to stand aloof, with the stench of blood and fear and spilled guts and shit in my nostrils, and my enemy in sight but out of reach. With commendable but immensely frustrating discipline, the Wolf was sticking to his orders, and patiently holding his five hundred in reserve.

  I could have neglected my orders, led my rearguard around the fringes of the battle, and fallen on the Company of Wolves as they stood idle. It was tempting, but not worth the risk. Had our line burst asunder while I was on my private revenge mission, Brittany would be lost, and my good name with it.

  It was well that I stayed on hand, for only a few minutes of fighting had passed before Montfort’s battalion on my left suddenly gave ground, their tight formation crumbling under the weight and impetus of the enemy advance. Charles had smashed a deep lane in their ranks, hacking men down right and left with his axe, and Montfort’s banners had dipped and vanished in the throng. Thinking their leader fallen, many of his knights yelled in fear and turned their backs. A full-scale rout threatened.

  I thanked God for the crisis, made the sign of the cross, and yelled at my trumpeter to sound the charge. He, stout lad, gave the signal, and I kicked Ram down the slope, drawing my broadsword and tossing away my helm. Let the damned French see that Sir Hugh Calveley was coming for them, huge and horrible, like a black-armoured giant out of legend, my red mane flying about my shoulders!

  The fugitives from Montfort’s broken battalion fled out of Ram’s path, and she may have ridden a few down, not that I cared. They were only Bretons. My men swarmed after me, five hundred horse and foot in a full-blooded charge, and we slammed into the disordered, over-excited ranks of the advancing foe like a butcher’s knife into an open wound.

  Charles de Blo
is probably died then, ridden down and trampled under the hoofs of my knights. Ram’s impetus carried me deep into the heart of the French battalion, but stopped short of puncturing it. I was cut off my from my men, surrounded by a hedge of swords and lances, and felt the blades ringing and scraping against my harness as I struck at the enemy, revelling in the blood welling over my greedy sword. There was the joy and stuff of life, Froissart - on the very cusp of violent death, a thrill superior to any drug or drink or sexual release you care to name.

  Reputation counts for a great deal, and while in Spain I had decided to enhance mine by paying a Moorish barber to file the incisors of my front teeth into sharpened points. I bared them now, peeling back my lips in a hideous grin as I shook my sword at the French and made their ears burn.

  “Come on, you whores, you dastards, you boy-lovers!” I screamed, snarling and drooling bloody phlegm like a rabid dog, “Calveley’s here to take your confessions, you putrid bastards, and send you to Hell with his name carved on your bellies!”

  Were it not for the fear I inspired, I would have been dragged from my horse and bludgeoned to death. As it was, the French parted ranks rather than stand in the way of the slavering, razor-toothed giant on the massive destrier, and I was able to make my way back to my men. They had done good work in my absence, shoring up Montfort’s line and locating Montfort himself, alive and largely intact, under a pile of twitching bodies.

  Alas, Ram had taken a lance in her belly, and a mace-blow had done considerable damage to her shoulder. I dismounted and ordered an esquire to take her to the rear. There was a lull in the fighting, as the battalions of Blois and Montfort disengaged for a while to lick their wounds and draw breath, and I had leisure to take stock of the battle’s progress.

  The battalions of Clisson and Auxerre were still rending each other, and severe execution was being done on the men of both sides. I saw Clisson striding too deep into the ranks of his foes, dealing death with a battle-axe, and then a Breton’s axe struck him on the visor and he vanished in the throng. I learned later that the axe had smashed in one side of his visor and crushed one of his eyes. His men fought on without him, and neither side could gain the advantage.