for revenge,’ Armstrong said loudly enough for the nearest archers to hear. ‘We’ll take him, we’ll take his city and we’ll take his goddamn women!’
The archers cheered, though Thomas did not see how the army could possibly take Caen. The walls were huge and well-buttressed with towers, and the ramparts were thick with defenders who looked as confident as the attackers. Thomas was searching the banners for the one showing three yellow hawks on a blue field, but there were so many flags and the wind was stirring them so briskly that he could not pick Sir Guillaume d’Evecque’s three hawks from the other gaudy ripples that swirled beneath the embrasures.
‘So what are you, Thomas?’ The Earl had dropped back to ride beside him. His horse was a big destrier so that the Earl, despite being much shorter than Thomas, towered above him. He spoke in French. ‘English or Norman?’
Thomas grimaced. ‘English, my lord. Right to my sore arse.’ It had been so long since he had ridden that his thighs were chafed raw.
‘We’re all English now, aren’t we?’ The Earl sounded mildly surprised.
‘Would you want to be anything else?’ Thomas asked, and looked around at the archers. ‘God knows, my lord, I wouldn’t want to fight them.’
‘Nor me,’ the Earl grunted, ‘and I’ve saved you a fight with Sir Simon. Or rather I’ve saved your miserable life. I talked to him last night. I can’t say he was very willing to spare you a throttling and I can’t blame him for that.’ The Earl slapped at a horsefly. ‘But in the end his greed overcame his hatred of you. You’ve cost me my share of the prize money for the Countess’s two ships, young Thomas. One ship for his dead squire and the other for the hole you put in his leg.’
‘Thank you, my lord,’ Thomas said effusively. He felt the relief surge through him. ‘Thank you,’ he said again.
‘So you’re a free man,’ the Earl said. ‘Sir Simon shook on it, a clerk made a note of it and a priest witnessed it. Now for God’s sake don’t go and kill another of his fellows.’
‘I won’t, sir,’ Thomas promised.
‘And you’re in my debt now,’ the Earl said.
‘I acknowledge it, my lord.’
The Earl made a dismissive noise, suggesting it was unlikely Thomas could ever pay such a debt, then he shot the archer a suspicious look. ‘And speaking of the Countess,’ he went on, ‘you never mentioned that you brought her north.’
‘It didn’t seem important, my lord.’
‘And last night,’ the Earl continued, ‘after I’d growled at Jekyll for you, I met her ladyship in the Prince’s quarters. She says you treated her with complete chivalry. It seems you behaved with discretion and respect. Is that really true?’
Thomas reddened. ‘If she says so, my lord, it must be true.’
The Earl laughed, then touched his spurs to his destrier. ‘I’ve bought your soul,’ he said cheerfully, ‘so fight well for me!’ He curved away to rejoin his men-at-arms.
‘He’s all right, our Billy,’ an archer said, nodding at the Earl, ‘a good one.’
‘If only they were all like him,’ Thomas agreed.
‘How come you talk French?’ the archer asked suspiciously.
‘Picked it up in Brittany,’ Thomas said vaguely.
The army’s vanguard had now reached the cleared space in front of the walls and a crossbow bolt slammed into the turf as a warning. The camp followers, who had helped give the illusion of overwhelming force, were pitching tents on the hills to the north, while the fighting men spread out in the plain that surrounded the city. Marshals were galloping between the units, shouting that the Prince’s men were to go clear about the walls to the Abbaye aux Dames on the city’s further side. It was still early, about mid-morning, and the wind brought the smell of Caen’s cooking fires as the Earl’s men marched past deserted farms. The castle loomed above them.
They went to the western side of the town. The Prince of Wales, mounted on a big black horse and followed by a standard-bearer and a troop of men-at-arms, galloped to the convent, which, because it lay well outside the city walls, had been abandoned. He would make it his home for the duration of the siege and Thomas, dismounting where Armstrong’s men would camp, saw Jeanette following the Prince. Following him like a puppy, he thought sourly, then chided himself for jealousy. Why be jealous of a prince? A man might as well resent the sun or curse the ocean. There are other women, he told himself as he hobbled his horse in one of the abbey pastures.
A group of archers was exploring the deserted buildings that lay close to the convent. Most were cottages, but one had been a carpenter’s workshop and was piled with wood-shavings and sawdust, while beyond it was a tannery, still stinking of the urine, lime and dung that cured the leather. Beyond the tannery was nothing but a waste ground of thistles and nettles that ran clear to the city’s great wall, and Thomas saw that dozens of archers were venturing into the weeds to stare at the ramparts. It was a hot day so that the air in front of the walls seemed to shiver. A small north wind drifted some high clouds and rippled the long grass that grew in the ditch at the base of the battlements. About a hundred archers were in the waste ground now and some were within long crossbow range, though no Frenchman shot at them. A score of the inquisitive bowmen were carrying axes to cut firewood, but morbid curiosity had driven them towards the ramparts instead of outwards to the woods and Thomas now followed them, wanting to judge for himself what horrors the besiegers faced. The screeching sound of ungreased axles made him turn to see two farm wagons being dragged towards the convent. They both held guns, great bulbous things with swollen metal bellies and gaping mouths. He wondered if the guns’ magic could blast a hole through the city’s ramparts, but even if it did then men would still have to fight through the breach. He made the sign of the cross. Maybe he would find a woman inside the city. He had almost everything a man needed. He had a horse, he had a hacqueton, he had his bow and arrow bag. He just needed a woman.
Yet he did not see how an army twice the size could cross Caen’s great walls. They reared up from their boggy ditch like cliffs, and every fifty paces there was a conical roofed bastion that would give the garrison’s crossbowmen the chance to slash their quarrels into the flanks of the attackers. It would be carnage, Thomas thought, far worse than the slaughter that had occurred each time the Earl of Northampton’s men had assailed the southern wall at La Roche-Derrien.
More and more archers came into the waste ground to stare at the city. Most were just inside crossbow range, but the French still ignored them. Instead the defenders began hauling in the gaudy banners that hung from the embrasures. Thomas looked for Sir Guillaume’s three hawks, but could not see them. Most of the banners were decorated with crosses or the figures of saints. One showed the keys of heaven, another the lion of St Mark and a third had a winged angel scything down English troops with a flaming sword. That banner disappeared.
‘What the hell are the goddamn bastards doing?’ an archer asked.
‘The bastards are running away!’ another man said. He was staring at the stone bridge that led from the old city to the Île St Jean.
That bridge was thronged with soldiers, some mounted, most on foot, and all of them streaming out of the walled city onto the island of big houses, churches and gardens. Thomas walked a few paces southwards to get a better view and saw crossbowmen and men-at-arms appear in the alleys between the island’s houses.
