Part 10 (1/2)

'It was easy enough getting in here,' Skeat said, 'but it'll be the devil's own job to get these sodden b.a.s.t.a.r.ds back out again.'

Sir Simon beat his sword on the backs of two drunks who were getting in the way of his men emptying a storehouse of its bolts of cloth. He saw Thomas and looked surprised, but he was too wary of Will Skeat to say anything. He just turned away.

'b.a.s.t.a.r.d must have paid off his debts by now,' Skeat said, still staring at Sir Simon's back. 'War's a good way to get rich, so long as you ain't taken prisoner and ransomed. Not that they'd ransom you or me, boy. Slit our bellies and p.r.i.c.k our eyes out, more like. Have you ever shot a crossbow?'

'No.'

'Ain't quite as easy as it looks. Not as hard as shooting a real bow, of course, but it still takes practice. G.o.dd.a.m.n things can pitch a bit high if you're not used to them. Do Jake and Sam want to help you?'

'They say so.'

'Of course they do, evil b.a.s.t.a.r.ds that they are.' Skeat still stared at Sir Simon, who was wearing his new, s.h.i.+ning armour. 'I reckon the b.a.s.t.a.r.d will carry his cash with him.'

'I would think so, yes.'

'Half mine, Tom, and I'll ask no questions come Sat.u.r.day.'

Thanks, Will'

'But do it proper, Tom,' Skeat said savagely, 'do it proper. I don't want to watch you hang. I don't mind watching most fools doing the rope dance with the p.i.s.s running down their legs, but it'd be a shame to watch you twitching your way to the devil.'

They went back to the walls. Neither man had collected any plunder, but they had already taken more than enough from their raids on the north Breton farms and it was now the turn of Totesham's men to gorge themselves on a captured town.

One by one the houses were searched and the tavern barrels were drained. Richard Totesham wanted his force to leave Lannion at dawn, but there were too many captured carts waiting to get through the narrow eastern gate and not nearly enough horses to pull the carts, so men were harnessing themselves the shafts rather than leave their pickings behind. Other men were drunk and senseless, and Totesham's men-at-arms scoured the town to find them, but it was fire that drove most of the drunks from their refuges. The townsfolk fled south as the English set the thatched roofs alight.

The smoke thickened into a vast dirty pillar that drifted south on the small sea wind. The pillar glowed a lurid red on its underside, and it must have been that sight which first told the approaching force from Guingamp that they had arrived too late to save the town. They had marched through the night, expecting to find some place where they could lay an ambush for Totesham's men, but the damage was already done. Lannion was burning and its wealth was piled on carts that were still being manhandled through the gate. But if the hated English could not be ambushed on their way to the town, then they could be surprised as they left and so the enemy commanders swung their forces eastwards towards the road which led back to La Roche-Derrien.

Cross-eyed Jake saw the enemy first. He was gazing south through the pearly mist that lay over the flat land and he saw the shadows in the vapour. At first he thought it was a herd of cows, then he decided it had to be refugees from the town. But then he saw a banner and a lance and the dull grey of a mail coat, and he shouted to Skeat that there were hors.e.m.e.n in sight.

Skeat peered over the ramparts. 'Can you see anything, Tom?'

It was just before dawn proper and the countryside was suffused with greyness and streaked with mist. Thomas stared. He could see a thick wood a mile or more to the south and a low ridge showing dark above the mist. Then he saw the banners and the grey mail in the grey light, and a thicket of lances.

'Men-at-arms,' he said, 'a lot of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.'

Skeat swore. Totesham's men were either still in the town or else strung along the road to La Roche-Derrien, and strung so far that there could be no hope of pulling them back behind Lannion's walls - though even if that had been possible it was not practical for the whole western side of the town was burning furiously and the flames were spreading fast. To retreat behind the walls was to risk being roasted alive, but Totesham's men were hardly in a fit condition to fight: many were drunk and all were laden with plunder.

'Hedgerow,' Skeat said curtly, pointing to a ragged line of blackthorn and elder that ran parallel to the road where the carts rumbled. 'Archers to the hedge, Tom. We'll look after your horses. Christ knows how we'll stop the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,' he made the sign of the cross, 'but we ain't got much choice.'

Thomas bullied a pa.s.sage at the crowded gate and led forty archers across a soggy pasture to the hedgerow that seemed a flimsy barrier against the enemy ma.s.sing in the silvery mist. There were at least three hundred hors.e.m.e.n there. They were not advancing yet, but instead grouping themselves for a charge, and Thomas had only forty men to stop them.

'Spread out!' he shouted. 'Spread out!' He briefly went onto one knee and made the sign of the cross. St Sebastian, he prayed, be with us now. St Guinefort, protect me. He touched the desiccated dog's paw, then made the sign of the cross again.

A dozen more archers joined his force, but it was still far too small. A score of pageboys, mounted on ponies and armed with toy swords, could have ma.s.sacred the men on the road, for Thomas's hedge did not provide a complete screen, but rather straggled into nothingness about half a mile from the town. The hors.e.m.e.n only had to ride round that open end and there would be nothing to stop them. Thomas could take his archers into the open ground, but fifty men could not stop three hundred. Archers were at their best when they were ma.s.sed together so that their arrows made a hard, steel-tipped rain. Fifty men could make a shower, but they would still be overrun and ma.s.sacred by the hors.e.m.e.n.

'Crossbowmen,' Jake grunted, and Thomas saw the men in green and red jackets emerging from the woods behind the enemy men-at-arms. The new dawn light reflected cold from mail, swords and helmets. 'b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are taking their time,' Jake said nervously. He had planted a dozen arrows in the base of the hedge, which was just thick enough to stop the hors.e.m.e.n, but not nearly dense enough to slow a crossbow bolt.

Will Skeat had gathered sixty of his men-at-arms beside the road, ready to countercharge the enemy whose numbers increased every minute. Duke Charles's men and their French allies were riding eastwards now, looking to advance about the open end of the hedge where there was an inviting swathe of green and open land leading all the way to the road. Thomas wondered why the h.e.l.l they were waiting. He wondered if he would die here. Dear G.o.d, he thought, but there were not nearly enough men to stop this enemy. The fires continued to burn in Lannion, pouring smoke into the pale sky.

He ran to the left of the line, where he found Father Hobbe holding a bow. 'You shouldn't be here, father,' he said.

'G.o.d will forgive me,' the priest said. He had tucked his ca.s.sock into his belt and had a small stand of arrows stuck into the hedgebank. Thomas gazed at the open land, wondering how long his men would last in that immensity of gra.s.s. Just what the enemy wanted, he thought, a stretch of bare flat land on which their horses could run hard and straight. Only the land was not entirely flat for it was dotted with gra.s.sy hummocks through which two grey herons walked stiff-legged as they hunted for frogs or ducklings. Frogs, Thomas thought, and ducklings. Sweet G.o.d, it was a mars.h.!.+ The spring had been unusually dry, yet his boots were soaking from the damp field he had crossed to reach the hedgerow. The realization burst on Thomas like the rising sun. The open land was mars.h.!.+ No wonder the enemy was waiting. They could see Totesham's men strung out for slaughter, but they could see no way across the swampy ground.

This way!' Thomas shouted at the archers. 'This way! Hurry! Hurry! Come on, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!'

He led them round the end of the hedge into the swamp where they leaped and splashed through a maze of marsh, tussocks and streamlets. They went south towards the enemy and once in range Thomas spread his men out and told them to indulge in target practice. His fear had gone, replaced by exaltation. The enemy was balked by the marsh. Their horses could not advance, but Thomas's light archers could leap across the tussocks like demons. Like h.e.l.lequin.

'Kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!' he shouted.

The white-fledged arrows hissed across the wetland to strike horses and men. Some of the enemy tried to charge the archers, but their horses floundered in the soft ground and became targets for volleys of arrows. The crossbowmen dismounted and advanced, but the archers switched their aim to them, and now more archers were arriving, dispatched by Skeat and Totesham, so that the marsh was suddenly swarming with English and Welsh bowmen who poured a steel-tipped h.e.l.l on the befuddled enemy. It became a game. Men wagered on whether or not they could strike a particular target. The sun rose higher, casting shadows from the dead horses. The enemy was edging back to the trees. One brave group tried a last charge, hoping to skirt the marsh, but their horses stumbled in the soft ground and the arrows spitted and sliced at them so that men and beasts screamed as they fell. One horseman struggled on, flailing his beast with the flat of his sword. Thomas put an arrow into the horse's neck and Jake skewered its haunch, and the animal screeched piteously as it thrashed in pain and collapsed into the swamp. The man somehow extricated his feet from his stirrups and stumbled cursing towards the archers with his sword held low and s.h.i.+eld high, but Sam buried an arrow in his groin and then a dozen more bowmen added their arrows before swarming over the fallen enemy. Knives were drawn, throats cut, then the business of plunder could begin. The corpses were stripped of their mail and weapons and the horses of their bridles and saddles, then Father Hobbe prayed over the dead while the archers counted their spoils.

The enemy was gone by mid-morning. They left two score of dead men, and twice that number had been wounded, but not a single Welsh or English archer had died.

Duke Charles's men slunk back to Guingamp. Lannion had been destroyed, they had been humiliated and Will Skeat's men celebrated in La Roche-Derrien. They were the h.e.l.lequin, they were the best and they could not be beaten.

The following morning Thomas, Sam and Jake left La Roche-Derrien before daybreak. They rode west towards Lannion, but once in the woods they swerved off the road and picketed their horses deep among the trees. Then, moving like poachers, they worked their way back to the wood's edge. Each had his own bow slung on his shoulder, and carried a crossbow too, and they practised with the unfamiliar weapons as they waited in a swathe of bluebells at the wood's margin from where they could see La Roche-Derrien's western gate. Thomas had only brought a dozen bolts, short and stub-feathered, so each of them shot just two times. Will Skeat had been right: the weapons did kick up as the archers loosed so that their first bolts went high on the trunk that was their target. Thomas's second shot was more accurate, but nothing like as true as an arrow shot from a proper bow. The near miss made him apprehensive of the morning's risks, but Jake and Sam were both cheerful at the prospect of larceny and murder.

'Can't really miss,' Sam said after his second shot had also gone high. 'Might not catch the b.a.s.t.a.r.d in the belly, but we'll hit him somewhere.' He levered the cord back, grunting with the effort. No man alive could haul a crossbow's string by arm-power alone and so a mechanism had to be employed. The most expensive crossbows, those with the longest range, used a jackscrew. The archer would place a cranked handle on the screw's end and wind the cord back, inch by creaking inch, until the pawl above the trigger engaged the string. Some crossbowmen used their bodies as a lever. They wore thick leather belts to which a hook was attached and by bending down, attaching the hook to the cord and then straightening, they could pull the twisted strings back, but the crossbows Thomas had brought from Lannion used a lever, shaped like a goat's hind leg, that forced the cord and bent the short bow shaft, which was a layered thing of horn, wood and glue. The lever was probably the fastest way of c.o.c.king the weapon, though it did not offer the power of a screw-c.o.c.ked bow and was still slow compared to a yew shaft. In truth there was nothing to compare with the English bow and Skeat's men debated endlessly why the enemy did not adopt the weapon. 'Because they're daft,' was Sam's curt judgement, though the truth, Thomas knew, was that other nations simply did not start their sons early enough. To be an archer meant starting as a boy, then practising and practising until the chest was broad, the arm muscles huge and the arrow seemed to fly without the archer giving its aim any thought.

Jake shot his second bolt into the oak and swore horribly when it missed the mark. He looked at the bow. 'Piece of s.h.i.+t,' he said. 'How close are we going to be?'

'Close as we can get,' Thomas said.

Jake sniffed. 'If I can poke the b.l.o.o.d.y bow into the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's belly I might not miss.'

'Thirty, forty feet should be all right,' Sam reckoned.

'Aim at his crotch,' Thomas encouraged them, 'and we should gut him.'

'It'll be all right,' Jake said, 'three of us? One of us has got to skewer the b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

'In the shadows, lads,' Thomas said, gesturing them deeper into the trees. He had seen Jeanette coming from the gate where the guards had inspected her pa.s.s then waved her on. She sat sideways on a small horse that Will Skeat had lent her and was accompanied by two grey-haired servants, a man and a woman, both of whom had grown old in her father's service and now walked beside their mistress's horse. If Jeanette had truly planned to ride to Louannec then such a feeble and aged escort would have been an invitation for trouble, but trouble, of course, was what she intended, and no sooner had she reached the trees than the trouble appeared as Sir Simon Jekyll emerged from the archway's shadow, riding with two other men.

'What if those two b.a.s.t.a.r.ds stay close to him?' Sam asked.

'They won't,' Thomas said. He was certain of that, just as he and Jeanette had been certain that Sir Simon would follow her and that he would wear the expensive suit of plate he had stolen from her.

'She's a brave la.s.s,' Jake grunted.

'She's got spirit,' Thomas said, 'knows how to hate someone.'

Jake tested the point of a quarrel. 'You and her?' he asked Thomas. 'Doing it, are you?'

'No.'

'But you'd like to. I would.'