weapon in a crushing blow against the big Breton’s Adam’s apple. The man dropped his falchion and clutched his throat as he rode away.
‘He’s good, isn’t he?’ Skeat said flatly. ‘Got suet for brains, but he knows how to fight.’
But, despite Sir Simon’s prowess, the enemy was winning and Thomas wanted to advance the archers. They only needed to run about thirty paces and then would have been in easy range of the rampaging enemy horsemen, but Will Skeat shook his head. ‘Never kill two Frenchmen when you can kill a dozen, Tom,’ he said reprovingly.
‘Our men are getting beat,’ Thomas protested.
‘Then that’ll teach ’em not to be bloody fools, won’t it?’ Skeat said. He grinned. ‘Just wait, lad, just wait, and we’ll skin the cat proper.’
The English men-at-arms were being beaten back and only Sir Simon was fighting with spirit. He was indeed good. He had driven the huge Breton from the fight and was now holding off four of the enemy, and doing it with a ferocious skill, but the rest of his men, seeing that their battle was lost and that they could not reach Sir Simon because there were too many enemy horsemen around him, turned and fled.
‘Sam!’ Will shouted across the road. ‘When I give you the word, take a dozen men and run away! You hear me, Sam?’
‘I’ll run away!’ Sam shouted back.
The English men-at-arms, some bleeding and one half-falling from his tall saddle, thundered back down the road towards La Roche-Derrien. The French and Bretons had surrounded Sir Simon, but Sir Geoffrey of the White Bridge was a romantic fellow and refused to take the life of a brave opponent, and so he ordered his men to spare the English knight.
Sir Simon, sweating like a pig under the leather and iron plate, pushed up the snoutlike visor of his helmet. ‘I don’t yield,’ he told Sir Geoffrey. His new armour was scarred and his sword edge chipped, but the quality of both had helped him in the fight. ‘I don’t yield,’ he said again, ‘so fight on!’
Sir Geoffrey bowed in his saddle. ‘I salute your bravery, Sir Simon,’ he said magnanimously, ‘and you are free to go with all honour.’ He waved his men-at-arms aside and Sir Simon, miraculously alive and free, rode away with his head held high. He had led his men into disaster and death, but he had emerged with honour.
Sir Geoffrey could see past Sir Simon, down the long road that was thick with fleeing men-at-arms and, beyond them, the captured livestock and the heaped carts of plunder that were being escorted by Skeat’s men. Then Will Skeat shouted at Sam and suddenly Sir Geoffrey could see a bunch of panicked archers riding northwards as hard as they could. ‘He’ll fall for it,’ Skeat said knowingly, ‘you just see if he don’t.’
Sir Geoffrey had proved in the last few weeks that he was no fool, but he lost his wits that day. He saw a chance to cut down the hated hellequin archers and recapture three carts of plunder and so he ordered his remaining thirty men-at-arms to join him and, leaving his four prisoners and nine captured horses in the care of his crossbowmen, waved his knights forward. Will Skeat had been waiting weeks for this.
Sir Simon turned in alarm as he heard the sound of hooves. Nearly fifty armoured men on big destriers charged towards him and, for a moment, he thought they were trying to capture him and so he spurred his horse towards the woods only to see the French and Breton horsemen crash past him at full gallop. Sir Simon ducked under branches and swore at Will Skeat, who ignored him. He was watching the enemy.
Sir Geoffrey de Pont Blanc led the charge and saw only glory. He had forgotten the archers in the woods, or else believed they had all fled after the defeat of Sir Simon’s men. Sir Geoffrey was on the cusp of a great victory. He would take back the plunder and, even better, lead the dreaded hellequin to a fiery fate in Lannion’s marketplace.
‘Now!’ Skeat shouted through cupped hands. ‘Now!’
There were archers on both sides of the road and they stepped out from the new spring foliage and loosed their bowstrings. Thomas’s second arrow was in the air before the first even struck. Look and loose, he thought, do not think, and there was no need to aim, for the enemy was a tight group and all the archers did was pour their long arrows into the horsemen so that in an eyeblink the charge was reduced to a tangle of rearing stallions, fallen men, screaming horses and splashing blood. The enemy had no chance. A few at the back managed to turn and gallop away, but the majority were trapped in a closing ring of bowmen who drove their arrows mercilessly through mail and leather. Any man who even twitched invited three or four arrows. The pile of iron and flesh was spiked with feathers, and still the arrows came, cutting through mail and driving deep into horseflesh. Only the handful of men at the rear and a single man at the very front of the charge survived.
That man was Sir Geoffrey himself. He had been ten paces in front of his men and maybe that was why he was spared, or perhaps the archers had been impressed by the manner in which he had treated Sir Simon, but for whatever reason he rode ahead of the carnage like a charmed soul. Not an arrow flew close, but he heard the screams and clatter behind and he slowed his horse then turned to see the horror. He watched with disbelief for an instant, then walked his stallion back towards the arrow-stuck pile that had been his men. Skeat shouted at some of his bowmen to turn and face the enemy’s crossbowmen, but they, seeing the fate of their men-at-arms, were in no mood to face the English arrows. They retreated southwards.
There was a curious stillness then. Fallen horses twitched and some beat at the road with their hooves. A man groaned, another called on Christ and some just whimpered. Thomas, an arrow still on his bowstring, could hear larks, the call of plovers and the whisper of wind in the leaves. A drop of rain fell, splashing the dust on the road, but it was a lone outrider of a shower that went to the west. Sir Geoffrey stood his horse beside his dead and dying men as if inviting the archers to add his corpse to the heap that was streaked with blood and flecked with goose feathers.
‘See what I mean, Tom?’ Skeat said. ‘Wait long enough and the bloody fools will always oblige you. Right, lads! Finish the bastards off!’ Men dropped their bows, drew their knives and ran to the shuddering heap, but Skeat held Thomas back. ‘Go and tell that stupid white bridge bastard to make himself scarce.’
Thomas walked to the Frenchman, who must have thought he was expected to surrender for he pulled off his helmet and extended his sword handle. ‘My family cannot pay a great ransom,’ he said apologetically.
‘You’re not a prisoner,’ Thomas said.
Sir Geoffrey seemed perplexed by the words. ‘You release me?’
‘We don’t want you,’ Thomas said. ‘You might think about going to Spain,’ he suggested, ‘or the Holy Land. Not too many hellequin in either place.’
Sir Geoffrey sheathed his sword. ‘I must fight against the enemies of my king so I shall fight here. But I thank you.’ He gathered his reins and just at that moment Sir Simon Jekyll rode out of the trees, pointing his drawn sword at Sir Geoffrey.
‘He’s my prisoner!’ he called to Thomas. ‘My prisoner!’
‘He’s no one’s prisoner,’ Thomas said. ‘We’re letting him go.’
‘You’re letting him go?’ Sir Simon sneered. ‘Do you know who commands here?’
‘What I know,’ Thomas said, ‘is that this man is no prisoner.’ He thumped the trapper-covered rump of Sir Geoffrey’s horse to send it on its way. ‘Spain or the Holy Land!’ he called after Sir Geoffrey.
Sir
