When the call finally did come, Gilbert could scarcely believe it.
Now he found himself in this motley array, with, on his left, Ralph and Bruno, and on his right a young, pale-faced Fleming whom they had found, for some reason, tied to a wheel.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am satisfied.’
‘Good,’ said Ralph.
‘You know what he wants to say?’ said Bruno.
Gilbert swallowed. ‘Yes.’
‘Well, look after it all the same,’ said Ralph.
Gilbert eased the sword in the scabbard. He did not feel quite so eager as he had done earlier in the day.
He put up his hand to feel the outline of Sandor’s crucifix under the hauberk. He wished it were Adele’s.
Fitzosbern looked at the last archers staggering into place, carrying great wood-and-leather canisters of arrows. Bursting quivers bounced on their bent backs. They set up the canisters on the ground immediately behind their lines, digging hurried holes with daggers and propping up with stones and earth.
‘God’s Teeth! You must have broken Baldwin’s heart!’
‘Yes,’ said the Duke flatly.
He summoned the archer sergeants. They ran over, puffing and sweating.
‘Sir?’
They glanced significantly at each other, sensing that the moment was special.
The Duke leaned forward with his hands on the pommel of his saddle.
‘You can not complain now of shortage.’
The sergeants beamed. ‘No, sir.’
‘Good. So – find your own best positions. You know the ground there well enough by now. Anywhere you like, but do not get in our way; remember we advance on a wide front. When I give the signal, you fire high as before. Choose your best men – thirty or forty. Crossbows, I suggest, but I leave it to you. Put them to fire at the tree and standards, nothing else. The rest – put a group on each section of the English line, and just keep going. Shoot and shoot and shoot. When you hear the advance, keep shooting.’
The sergeants blinked.
‘When you see us on the slope,’ said William, ‘keep shooting.’
The sergeants gaped.
‘You stop only when we reach the shield wall. Is that clear? Not a moment before.’
‘Sir!’
William dismissed them.
He looked at the still line, looked up at Senlac Hill, and looked at Fitzosbern.
‘Harold thinks I will not commit the whole army along the whole line. He thinks Normans are cautious.’
Fitzosbern cleared his throat. ‘Then at least we shall surprise him.’
William gazed for a moment. ‘Yes.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We have come a long way for a crown, Fitz. Now it waits on a branch of that tree.’
‘Just so. All we have to do is pluck it down.’
‘An earldom waits for you; you know that.’
Fitzosbern held out his hand. ‘We have come a long way from Vaudreuil, William. I have enjoyed the journey thus far. God willing, we shall meet again soon by the tree – to taste its fruit.’
The Duke gripped it warmly. ‘God bless you, Fitz. I want no man closer when I get there.’
Eustace of Boulogne presented himself.
‘My lord, may I ask you once more—’
‘Give him a spear, Fitz, and give me some peace.’
Turstin of Bec seized the standard. William cantered down the line.
‘Come, my lords, my lads. Only Hell awaits us down here. All we have to do to escape is to climb that tree, where a new kingdom will greet us.’
‘Even if it is only the Kingdom of Heaven,’ thought Florens of Arras.
Gilbert felt a horse nudging his right leg. It was not a great destrier, but a light, foreign pony. He gasped.
‘Why are you not with the horses?’
Sandor waved a hand. ‘I am.’
‘What about the others?’
‘There are no others – only those.’
Sandor pointed towards the threshing limbs in the grass in front of them. ‘I do not wish to listen any more to my babies dying. Taillefer sleeps, and my friends are here. Where else should I be?’
He was not smiling. In his hand he carried a small, light bow and a thin clutch of arrows. Tousled, staring, tight-cheeked, he looked like the dreaded Turks that Gilbert had heard about.
The trumpets blew.
The archers stretched their strings.
‘Fire!’
Holy Virgin! thought Brian the Breton. It was like a rain cloud on wings. At least it gave them a few more minutes while the archers emptied their quivers. Without thinking, he bit off another piece of carrot. With his other hand he clasped and unclasped the hilt of cousin Geoffrey’s sword, searching for a familiar grip.
He almost choked when the trumpets blared again. Brian could scarcely believe his ears. The archers were still firing. They blew again. No – his ears had not deceived him. The leaders’ pennons lowered and raised. It was unmistakable: the advance was to begin.
All round the valley in front of Senlac Hill the pennons swayed and the orders were bellowed.
Brian obeyed, casting uneasy glances over his shoulder at the massed archers. By some fearsome magic, they seemed able to keep shafts in the air all the time. He was not sure now where the greater danger came from – the front or the rear.
Down the stream and across. The whine of the arrows was smothered by the splashing of countless feet and hooves. No trumpet blew now; no man shouted. Up on Senlac Hill the English waited, as still as a forest after a fire.
Past the first bodies, the scattered weapons, the writhing horses. Past the knoll, piled with dead from both sides. Tussocks of grass pink with water and blood. Beginning the climb, stumbling and sliding, the earth turned and churned with a whole day’s trampling. Past exhausted cripples, who leaned on shields and urged them to grisly vengeance.
Still the arrows flew.
Brian looked across to the centre. When? When? If they left it too late there would be no space to gain speed and force. Give the word too early, and tired horses and men would collapse against the shield wall, too weak to raise an arm.
There it was!
A thin, plaintive cry almost carried away by the breeze. It was answered by a swelling roar that swept like a wave towards him.
‘Diex aie!’
Brian’s heart leaped. Convulsively, he tightened his hold on cousin Geoffrey’s sword. He found himself running and shouting, sliding and shouting, stumbling and shouting. When he reached the top he was forced to hold the sword in both hands and swing it like a Saxon axe. He hit a helmet so hard that his sword was nearly knocked into the air. Shaking all over from the impact, he barely held on to it.
Men surged past him. He felt a shield wobble under his feet.
Saxon faces appeared on either side of him as well as in front. Desperate, flushed, snarling faces, with teeth showing.
Great God! They were through! They were inside the shield wall!
The Saxons fought like devils to stem the tide, giving ground only in death. Brian, crazed with excitement and sensing victory at last, laid about him with renewed strength.
Horses jostled him out their way. Brian glimpsed the familiar striped stockings beneath the cavalry split hauberk, the massive saddles and thick, heavy stirrups.
As one horseman overtook him, Brian noticed, in that flood of incident, one tiny detail – two arrows hanging loose from the back of the man’s shoulders. They had struck his mail at a wide angle and their heads had become enmeshed in the links.
Ralph Pomeroy had such a painful back anyway that he barely noticed them. Borne forward by the charge, he now lunged and swung for dear life, kicking his mount ahead all the time in an effort to force his passage through the sea of savage faces.
Horsemen broke away from him to the left.
‘They fly!’
Pomeroy could have sworn it was his brother’s voice.
For the first time that day he saw a Saxon’s back. Seve
ral peasants were running away to the north side of the hill. A group of riders were spurring in pursuit.
William Capra swore at his third mount of the day to get it to respond. It rolled over, its hind legs slashed by a scythe.
Ralph Pomeroy started to swing his horse’s head round to join them, when something gripped him across the throat from behind.
Gasping and choking, he was jerked from the saddle, and hit the ground with such force that he lay winded. All he was conscious of was a pair of muddy feet, one of which was bloodstained.
The sheepman crippled him again by ramming the butt of the crook into his crotch, and was just drawing his knife when he was bowled over by a riderless horse. By the time he had recovered, a forest of legs and bodies was between him and his groaning prey.
A housecarl dragged him by the shoulder.
‘Back, back! Close up. We must shut off the right. We can no longer fight here. Too many of them. Close up.’
The sheepman hesitated, still thinking longingly of his fallen Norman’s throat.
The housecarl hit him.
‘If you stay here, you die. If you run like them, you die.’
Screams reached them, from where the fugitives were being caught.
The sheepman found himself amid a whole group of sweating, swearing housecarls. He was terrified of the backswing of the axes, but he was behind a wall of shields again.
William Capra and Ralph Pomeroy each snatched at a riderless horse, and found themselves gazing at each other across the saddle. Capra was up first. Pomeroy turned away and grabbed another bridle.
They had no choice but to go forward. A press of knights and swordsmen flung themselves at the shields in desperate, mindless repetition. Each time they braced themselves for a final effort. Each time they drooped faster in fatigue. Each time they fell back with hideous wounds among them.
Each time too they heard Odo or Giffard or Montgomery or someone yelling above the din, ‘Get in! Turn! To the line! Once more! Again! Only once more! There is no retreat now. We win here, or we die. God help us, or we die.’
‘Diex aie!’
Desperate knots of men charged at weak points of the wall, scorning all risk or danger. They would make a breach, but it would cost their lives. By the time fresh knights could scramble up to get through, the English had closed the gap again, and bloody axes still swept screaming men from saddles.
The left seemed to be holding slightly better than the right. Inspired by a giant, they said. Edwin wondered . . .
He lost count of the number of times they shuffled to the right in order to close the wall. Whenever he glanced over his shoulder, the Dragon of Wessex and the Fighting Man were nearer.
Once he thought he saw the King. Harold wore his helmet again. He had sheathed his sword. He stood by the apple tree with his senior staff, or what was left of them. Each man gripped a two-handed axe.
Men started to trickle away. One of Harold’s staff bellowed at them.
Harold stopped him.
‘Let them go. They have fought like heroes. We can not expect them to die like saints as well.’
‘You are ready for it, sir.’
‘That is not the same,’ said Harold. ‘I am a king. It goes with the crown.’
‘Then are we lost?’
‘Not yet. The Bastard may overreach himself.’ He patted the lichen-covered trunk of the apple tree. ‘I have dangled my crown from this tree. His greed may yet make him stretch out his arm too far. Then we shall have him.’
Harold pointed. ‘Look there. Did you ever think to see a man going towards the fight at a time like this? If a fat old man like that comes to face the foe, what should we have to fear?’
Gorm stumbled towards the left, still searching, searching. He fought his way past men desperate now to get away. One of them dropped a spear in his panic. Gorm picked it up and wandered into the battle, still looking for a big man, a big man with an axe . . .
He did not hear the noise; he no longer felt the pain in his arm; he did not notice the trickle of fugitives becoming a steadilygrowing stream.
A Norman stood in front of him with a drawn sword. Gorm lunged simply in order to get him out of the way. Unable to get his spear out of the man’s stomach, Gorm flung it aside and left the wretch doubled over it.
Then he stopped. He had never heard Godric roar like that before, but he knew at once who it was. He pushed his way past two riderless horses.
There was Godric, laying about himself with a pitchfork. Even as Gorm arrived, it was splintered by a French sword. Godric gazed at it, baffled. The exhausted Frenchman grasped his sword again and braced himself for a second stroke. Godric bent with fatigue.
Gorm seized one of the collapsed wooden stakes from the shield wall, couched one end under his arm, and rammed the point into the Frenchman’s chest. He flew over backwards as Gorm fell with his own onset.
Godric turned and frowned. He looked like a man in a dream, but Gorm felt sure he had been seen and recognised.
Another rush of mailed men loomed behind Godric. Gorm glimpsed a Norman pennon and screamed a warning. He saw a Norman knight raise a mace; another was couching a spear. Godric put up the splintered handle of the pitchfork as his only shield. Gorm cried out in anguish at the sight.
A horse fell on him, winding him and blocking his view. More bodies fell across him; a hideous warmth ran across the side of his neck as heavy mail pressed him down. Hurried feet thudded and crunched beside his ears.
He could hear the din of battle now all around him, but he could not see. He could not see that Normans had broken in once more from the right, and were now behind him as well as before.
The shield wall was being twisted and bent back on itself. In some places men were so tired that they were almost falling over with the momentum of their own blows. Recovery and a second blow took longer each time. Beaumont was crying out with the pain of fatigue in his right arm. The younger spearmen wept with the effort of keeping arms up to thrust; throwing was now out of the question. Pairs of combatants let their weapons fall, and collapsed to their knees with their arms on each other’s shoulders.
Normans and Saxons alike fell dead or exhausted across each other amid ruins of shields and stakes. The desperate, panting survivors trod and slipped blindly.
William and his vassals tore their voices to pieces – begging, coaxing, beseeching, demanding one more effort. They could see with their own eyes: the ring of housecarls was dwindling; the wings of fyrdmen and peasants were melting away. One more push – just one more! Nearer to the tree and to the wavering standards. Splendour of God – to be so close!
The men in front of Edwin pulled back a few yards and drooped over their swords, helpless with fatigue. Edwin was reeling, his eyes smarting from sweat. He could hear Wilfrid wheezing beside him, too out of breath even to swear. Across the small space men glowered at each other in impotent fury and frustration, each knowing that the slightest of strokes could topple the enemy and each unable to produce it.
Edwin glanced back. The apple tree with its standards was almost directly behind him, but no longer did the shield wall stretch out to the right-hand end of Caldbec ridge. Instead it bent round sharply and folded back almost behind the tree.
Still and again, knots of Norman knights managed desperate short charges of just a few paces. In one short respite, Beaumont and Giffard found themselves face to face for a moment, before Beaumont, white and breathless, fell off his horse in a state of total collapse.
Giffard leaned down towards him, his own face glistening purple with heat and sweat. He swallowed and dragged the words out of his tortured lungs.
‘Running out of breath, are we? Let me show you something. Something only a true knight can do.’
He roared at those nearest. ‘Are there any men left?’
Beaumont was unable to move. Tears streamed from his eyes, down past his ears. Judith was now further away than ever.
Giffard repeated his call. ‘Are there an
y men here?’
Capra and Pomeroy, crazed with excitement, followed Giffard’s challenge. So did one or two others. Montgomery, alarmed, spurred and urged his bleeding horse after them.
Edwin saw the group of Norman knights thrust in deeper than the rest. Then he had to turn to his front.
Wilfrid heaved his axe once more, his eyes staring.
‘Bastards!’
Eustace of Boulogne watched the small group of knights hacking their way.
‘They are through!’ he yelled. ‘They are through! They are through to the tree!’
As he spoke one of them disappeared into the surge of weapons round him.
Gilbert saw it too. Through a haze of sweat and double vision he saw the others press on, saw the English standards falter.
Grasping his sword and holding it high, he took a deep breath and shouted, ‘Victory!’ His throat responded with only a hoarse rasp.
He kicked frantically at his lathered horse.
Ralph, further back, saw his intention and tried to stop him. He would not survive in that carnage. How often had he told the boy to think first and rush second. A broken boar is a dangerous boar. The English were broken but were not running yet.
He was too far away to shout. His horse was too tired to cover the ground between them. He looked round desperately. Sandor, with his light pony – Sandor could catch him. Sandor was yards away the other side, screaming unearthly battle cries, cries that came straight from a Hunnish hell.
Ralph raged and swore.
A voice in his ear said, ‘Leave him to me.’
Bruno urged Sorrel after Gilbert. Ralph watched in a fever of anxiety. He remembered Gilbert bringing Bruno to a halt before the ravine. That had been a rapid, violent matter of thudding hooves and flying turf. Now men and horses were moving like creatures in a cloudy dream – the sort of dream one had when arms and legs moved but no ground was covered.
It seemed minutes before Bruno reached out and caught Gilbert’s bridle. The shock of the sudden halt was too much for Sorrel’s front leg. It buckled, and Bruno was thrown from the saddle. A snarling housecarl rushed forward with raised axe.
The Last Conquest Page 48