Crown in Candlelight

by Rosemary Hawley Jarman

  Sitting on the ground, Owen watched as the King left his tent to confer with emissaries from his brother the Duke of Clarence and the Earl of Suffolk. Clarence’s detachment lay among farmlands north-east of Harfleur, and Suffolk’s guarded the inland slopes. The siege guns and horses had been landed and the men had waited all day for their orders. They were already bored; some were sidling from camp towards the farms and vineyards, like truant children. Owen had no desire to follow them. He knew their intent: women, plunder, wine, and that they risked severe reprisal. The King had made himself plain regarding capital offences; killing or raping women, endangering the life of a woman with child, entering a church to plunder any hallowed vessel, ornament or book; any man who touched the Sacrament would be drawn and hanged. Yet still they crept away, towards the farmhouses and church spires. Little groups full of bravado on whom hot sun beat down, making them sweaty and lustful and crueller than at home.

  A rank stench rose from the marsh upon which Harfleur was built. It mingled with the reek from the latrine pits and fly-infested midden where the animals were tethered. Bloated insects attacked Owen where he sat. His nerves were slightly overstrung from impatience. He had survived the three-day crossing and was ready for the fight. So far all he had killed (he slapped one blood-gorged insect) were these cursed stinging creatures. Already he had made himself unpopular with the men; a toady. The little scene aboard the Trinité Royale had not passed unnoticed. He had looked to Davy Gam, wondering how to explain to the others, but Gam had gone as an officer to help oversee Suffolk’s detachment. So Owen sat waiting alone. He was thankful he would not have to put on full armour. The heat was terrible. His shirt clung to him and the foul smell of marsh gas worsened. He scratched and swore and heard a soft laugh behind him.

  ‘Save your strength, friend, and let them bite. The waiting is only beginning.’

  Legs came into view, then a black jerkin of boiled leather, a round face and sentimental dark eyes. The man sat down beside him, laying aside the longbow he carried and removing the arrows fletched with goosequills from his belt.

  ‘I see you have a quiver for your darts,’ he said without envy. ‘One of the privileged.’

  ‘It was issued with my bow.’ The beloved springald had been superseded by order of the quartermaster. He did not like the tall bow half as well.

  ‘I’m John Page,’ said the man. ‘Failed poet, amateur soldier.’

  ‘Let a Welsh poet greet an English one,’ said Owen. ‘You make rhymes?’

  ‘I try. But I sing them better.’

  John Page smiled. His dark eyes glistened; they had the look of tears always near the brim.

  ‘What’s a poet doing as a soldier?’ said Owen.

  ‘I was impressed,’ Page answered.

  ‘I volunteered.’

  ‘One of the few. Half these ships and more than half the men were pressed into this enterprise.’

  Owen said: ‘The men seem content enough.’

  ‘There was a Frenchman, Froissart, not long dead. He said: Prowess is a lure few can resist. It is the mother and light of noble men. As the timber cannot have life without flame, so the man cannot come to honour or the world’s glory without prowess. That’s what they hope for, and why they seem content.’

  ‘I know all about prowess,’ said Owen softly. ‘I am godson to Glyn Dwr.’ When Page confessed ignorance of the Lord, it was as if he had never heard of Ysbaddaden the giant. Owen was moved to murmur a very few words of ‘Culhwch and Olwen’, looking loftily ahead, as if communing with spirits.

  ‘French I speak,’ said Page. ‘Little Welsh, though. What’s it about?’ and Owen told him.

  ‘You should sing it to the King,’ said Page.. ‘He’d enjoy the young hero and the battles and the boar-hunt. The beautiful maiden’s another matter.’ He laughed and lay back on the ground, brushing an ant from his face. ‘It’s no maiden he seeks; but a ravaged hag.’ He sat up again. ‘You don’t follow? France is the woman he wants—and she’s no longer lovely, with a madman on her shoulder and a child at her head and the dogs of Burgundy and Armagnac growling over her entrails. The Princess, Katherine, is her poor heart, which he must snatch for supremacy.’

  ‘She’s beautiful, at least?’ said Owen, trying to salvage some romance.

  John Page rubbed his round chin. ‘I only spoke to one who ever saw her. She’s been cloistered for years. But she visited Calais—my lord of Warwick said she was quiet and thin but not uncomely. She’ll be about fourteen. But doubtless legend will give her the face of an angel. Legend’s a hardy plant. You heard about the tennis balls …’

  ‘Why, yes! The Dauphin offered them in insult for the King to play with—Harry said that he’d play a game of ball in France to make men weep.’

  ‘All lies.’ Page smiled. ‘Had that been true, the King would have flung himself on France a year ago, money or no money for troops and arms! But it’s a good story, isn’t it?’ Then he said, musing: ‘So you volunteered. I wager whoever recruited you never mentioned that the King might lose his holy war. That we might all end up in a ditch, outmatched five to one. The French are partial to throat-cutting,’ he said merrily.

  ‘It’s a skill I’m willing to learn.’

  ‘Just look at their defences!’ said Page wonderingly, pointing. Harfleur’s wall was pierced by the Rouen gate at the southeast, the Leure gate at the south-west and the Montivilliers gate in the northeast. Each was protected by porctullis and drawbridge and flanking towers, reflected in the moat. Every approach was barred by timbers and earthworks, and reinforced by freshly dug ditches deep in water. There was a barbican of ironbound tree-trunks nearly as high as the wall and broken by slits for the discharge of shot and burning oil. The garrison tower was prominently visible. Above it a scarlet standard, the oriflamme of France, hung in the humid air.

  ‘They’ve a good commander, too. The Sire d’Estouteville, He sent back quite a sharp message when asked to surrender as an English subject. Now the Sire de Gaucourt’s taken over, with at least three hundred more troops. See that moat! It will be the devil of a job to mine under the walls.’

  ‘But we have good artillery,’ said Owen. Little distant figures, carpenters and labourers, were building the gun emplacements. Wooden palisades had been erected to protect them as they worked. Already swarms of arrows swished and thudded home from behind the moated barbican. Men were digging the trenches along which additional guns were to be brought as near the town wall as possible. As Owen watched, a man unwarily straightening up in the trench was killed by a single shot. John Page was writing; he had a quill and a tiny inkhorn which he carried in his pouch. The sun had gone in but the humidity was worse. A drop of warm rain splashed down. One of the illicit raiding parties was returning, weaving wetly along the path through the marsh, driving a few calves and pigs, rolling a cask of wine and carrying baskets of apples and grapes. The leader was so drunk that he fell twice, his face in the swamp. He was dragging a woman along. Owen recognized him. It was John Fletcher, the sentry whom Hywelis had frightened over a year ago.

  The woman was crying, swearing in French. She sank her teeth in Fletcher’s wrist and he gave her a smack in the face that made her reel.

  ‘Such chivalry!’ said John Page.

  ‘Hold your tongue, poet,’ Fletcher said, staggering up to them. He began laughing uncontrollably. Hauling the woman, he lurched over to the winecask and wrenched out its bung. He flung himself on the ground, opening his jaws to the red stream, drinking until pushed away by others eager to take their turn. Then he seized a handful of little apples and green grapes, and crushed them into his face. He looked at Owen.

  ‘You should have been with us, Welshman,’ he said, belching. ‘We had sport.’

  ‘What do you intend for her, or need I ask?’ said John Page, indicating the woman.

  ‘I’ve brought her to be my con-concubine. All great men have ’em.’ He belched again. ‘Where’s that shellfish?’

  Like a warm tainted hand
the foul air pressed down. Sweat streamed down Owen’s back. He watched the men drag up a basket from which a powerful odour arose. Fletcher split open a handful of mussels, corroded with brine, and sucked at the little tongues within. He had gobbled a score before Page asked: ‘Were those gathered in the marsh?’

  ‘Ay, from the salt creeks.’ Excitedly: ‘There’s thousands of ’em! We can live like lords!’

  ‘They’ll make you sick,’ said Page.

  Glassy-eyed from wine and the exertions of the raid, the others were sitting down, flapping at flies and munching the cockles and mussels. Fletcher had released the woman. She stood angrily, nervously watching him while he chewed on, stopping only for great draughts of the thin new wine. Presently these excesses had their effect; his head drooped and he stretched more languidly on the ground, his eyes closing:

  ‘Well, it’s your belly,’ said Page, turning to look away towards the gun emplacements. One of Fletcher’s friends was suddenly overcome, and leaned to vomit. The woman took a step towards Owen.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  He caught her hand and began to walk steadily with her to the edge of the marsh. She spoke to him in French and he answered her. She was small, gap-toothed, her hair wildly awry. She abused Fletcher in ornamental terms. He had fired her cottage, slain her cow and felled her grandfather.

  ‘Devils!’ she said vehemently. ‘Already he raped my sister, then said she was too old and captured me instead. English devils!’

  Owen pushed her towards the marsh path. Fletcher was snoring now and the others were throwing dice.

  ‘Run, quickly.’ But she pressed against his side, her expression changing.

  ‘I will not stay for him.’ She stroked his sweat-damp sleeve. ‘He’s a pig. But for you, then I would not mind.’

  ‘Go,’ he said. She stank of the marsh. And she was offended.

  ‘Fool! Baby! Pigs and babies!’ And spat.

  He wiped his neck. He said: ‘The King has issued orders about camp-followers. Any who come within three miles of camp are to have their left arm broken …’

  ‘Swine!’ she shrieked, and reiterated that the English were Satan’s spawn and should beware the might of France, then ran sobbing across the marsh. Owen walked thoughtfully back to join John Page. Fletcher and his company lay in an untidy huddle, sure enough like pigs in a sty.

  At that moment there was a wild trumpet-bray from the vicinity of the officers’ tents. Almost immediately the first of the assembled guns spoke. There was a thunderbolt crash as a ball the size of a millstone hurtled to strike the barbican of Harfleur. The siege had begun.

  Now he stood behind a curtain of wattle and iron, perforated with squints through which arrows could be discharged at the defenders of the beleaguered town. The French, with an elegant imprudence, were making little sallies out over the bridge from the barbican to loose a hail of shot and retreat, leaving English dead and, as often, falling slain themselves. The archers’ task was to repel these assaults while the great guns did their work. Twenty men were needed to load and prime the King’s Daughter, the Messenger and the London—ten to lift the ammunition alone, for the stones were five feet in diameter. Bending, running, heaving, men fainted in the now impossible heat, and were swiftly replaced. The guns had been brought near the walls of the town. Screens to protect the gunners were hinged and staked into the ground, lifted then lowered again as soon as the charge had been fired.

  Owen drew the fletch back to his ear and loosed an arrow. He saw one of the Harfleur archers in the act of pulling a shortbow to his chest drop his weapon and, falling, clap a hand to his throat where Owen’s barb now protruded. I killed him, he thought. How easy it is. A crossbow quarrel thudded through the planking on his left, impaling his neighbour to the screen like a writhing insect tortured by a child. The next moment John Page had come to replace him, inserting an arrow through the squint. His face was dirty with sweat; he smiled grimly.

  ‘You’ve done a long stint,’ he called.

  ‘Sixteen hours today. Ten yesterday,’ said Owen.

  The siege guns seemed to have been roaring for ever. His back was on fire from the sun and the tension. His bowarm felt as if it would never again be straight. His clothes were sodden and filthy, and the stinking marsh seemed to have worked down into his lungs. If he thought about it, it made him retch.

  ‘How’s your belly?’ asked Page.

  ‘Still calm and whole. Diolch i Duw.’

  Page aimed at a flicker of activity from the barbican. The French were coming out again on another lunatic foray that could sometimes prove spectacularly successful. Last time they had captured two apprentice gunners and a knight, dragging them back behind the town walls.

  ‘Don’t drink the wine,’ said Page, like a litany. ‘The shellfish are poisonous. Leave the green fruit alone. I’ve just been round to the surgeons’ tents. It’s a filthy way to die. Worse than that, almost …’

  A black veil of flies was settling on the corpse of the recently impaled archer.

  ‘You have marshes in Wales, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. But they’re clean!’

  The fretful polluted sun fringed Owen’s tawny head and face with gold. The barrier shook as a volley of arrows landed just above his head. He and Page and the hundred or so other archers were loosing shot after shot as the French ran out, their assault covered from the walls by a profusion of gun-stones and arrows. They carried burning brands and small kegs of gunpowder which they lobbed at the protective screens and into the compound housing the provision wagons. There were a stutter of explosions; black smoke drifted along the line. Wagons and tents erupted; men running to douse the fires became targets for the French archers. The attackers ran back behind the barbican, leaping over bodies. Owen shot at the last fleeing figure but smoke from part of the blazing palisade spoiled his aim. The King’s Daughter spoke shatteringly, her force throwing two of the gunners backwards into the trench. The vast ball whistled high over the defences of Harfleur and buried itself with a cataclysmic roar in the structure of the south-west gate. It collapsed, bringing down with it two of the golden towers with the painted swans and snails. A score of French were killed by their fall. Through the gap the town could be seen: more towers, dwellings, people running. A holy nun no longer, thought Owen. More like an antheap breached by a giant’s foot. All down the line came weary cheering.

  ‘What machines!’ he said to Page in awe.

  ‘Ay. But the Messenger at the other gate is out of commission. They’re having to use the arblasts and mangonels. But it was a fair shot, I grant you.’

  Owen wedged himself against the screen and felt for a fresh arrow. His neck muscles screamed with stress. Sweat dripped from his face. A bluebottle ventured on to his eyelid to drink, and he shivered. The stench of urine and ordure rose from the line where archers had relieved themselves during the long hours at the palisade. He tried to spit, and failed.

  ‘Your flask’s empty,’ said Page, and passed a little leather bottle.

  ‘Drink only sparingly. I don’t even trust the water. But that wine is death, like the fish and the fruit. I’ve never seen such sickness. Now, St Barbara, improve my aim!’

  Evening was descending. The sky over the swamp was green and in the west like watery blood. Insects whined about the men’s heads in a gluttonous cloud. A boy came to stand behind the line with a cask of tow-wrapped arrows, dipping them in pitch and fire and passing them to the archers, who discharged them, flaming, through the slit. Smoke scorched eyes, seared throats and stomachs. Harfleur had lighted missiles too; the dimming sky was crossed by parabolas of fire. In the flame-lit dusk the French were already shoring up the broken gate efficiently with bricks and mortar and sandbags. On top of the walls men lay with vats of sulphur and lime and hot fat. The River Lézarde which flowed through the town between the Leure and Montivilliers gates and was swelled by the tidal estuary had been fortified with chains and tree-trunks and iron stakes; the English fleet
lay in constant danger, like the messengers sent by small craft to make contact with the captains beyond the marsh and the valley which had been flooded earlier by the French. While in camp the sickness grew; the awful bowel-rot that could bring death in a matter of hours. The only cheering rumour was that Harfleur was also plagued by this.

  All night the great guns went on, as on every night, spewing out fiery millstones. The Messenger was repaired, and the London broke down. The heat changed to a clammy, noxious chill. Down the line men squatted groaning and passed blood. Complete exhaustion, filled with unreality, suddenly caught at Owen. He stared drunkenly at the whirling, arching fires. The palisade shook as flaming steel bit into it. A boy in charge of the pitch barrels rushed to fight the fire and was impaled as he worked. Owen’s hand fumbled for a fresh arrow. His quiver was empty. He turned and spoke, insane with fatigue, to a burning bush nearby, then plunged face down through the smoke to the reeking earth, awakening to find himself in Hell.

  All round where he lay were the sounds of men in torment, the whispering cries of the dying, the mumble of priests mingling with the occasional sharp rattle of death. The foetid air was like a heavy stone on his chest. On the torch-lit tent walls the shadows of the doctors moving ceaselessly about their business were huge, grotesquely surging monsters. Beneath his hands the straw was slimed with blood; with trembling fingers he explored his own body, relieved to find it whole. But someone had lately died miserably here, leaving the legacy of his pain, a soaking corruption. The weary surgeons grumbled and cursed as they worked. Owen raised his spinning head and watched as they cut out arrow-heads and tried to succour a man with half his shoulder blown away by cannon-shot. They plugged gashes with powdered herbs and bound them with whatever linen was available. Yet such casualties were in the minority; death’s real dominion bore a breath so foul it was almost unbearable. The wounded died cleanly compared with the hundreds taken by the dysentery; their end was horror and shame, their vitals dissolved in blood and filth.