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 horsemen 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 bastards.’
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 bastards,’ he made the sign of the cross, ‘but we ain’t got much choice.’
Thomas bullied a passage at the crowded gate and led forty archers across a soggy pasture to the hedgerow that seemed a flimsy barrier against the enemy massing in the silvery mist. There were at least three hundred horsemen 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 massacred 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 horsemen 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 massed together so that their arrows made a hard, steel-tipped rain. Fifty men could make a shower, but they would still be overrun and massacred by the horsemen.
‘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. ‘Bastards 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 horsemen, 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 hell they were waiting. He wondered if he would die here. Dear God, 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.
‘God will forgive me,’ the priest said. He had tucked his cassock 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 grass. 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 grassy hummocks through which two grey herons walked stiff-legged as they hunted for frogs or ducklings. Frogs, Thomas thought, and ducklings. Sweet God, it was a marsh! 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 marsh! 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 bastards!’
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 hellequin.
‘Kill the bastards!’ 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 hell 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 shield 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 hellequin, 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
