rider saw the Duke standing helpless beside a horse; he recognized the value of the man’s shining plate armour and so spurred at him. The Duke fended the sword blow with his shield, swung his own blade that jarred on the enemy’s leg armour and suddenly the horseman was gone.
Another Englishman had pulled his leader’s horse away. A mass of French horsemen was coming down the hill. The King had sent them in hope of capturing the English lord and his men, and still more Frenchmen, unable to join the attack on the tower because too many of their fellows were assembling to help kill the garrison’s remnant, were now charging the bridge. ‘Back!’ the English leader called, but the village street and the narrow bridge were blocked by fugitives and threatened by Frenchmen. He could cut his way through, but that would mean killing his own archers and losing some of his knights in the chaotic panic, so instead he looked across the road and saw a path running beside the river. It might lead to the beach, he thought, and there, perhaps, he could turn and ride east to rejoin the English lines.
The English knights slashed their spurs back. The path was narrow, only two horsemen could ride abreast; on one side was the River Ham and on the other a stretch of boggy swamp, but the path itself was firm and the English rode it until they reached a stretch of higher ground where they could assemble. But they could not escape. The small piece of higher ground was almost an island, reachable only by the path and surrounded by a morass of reeds and mud. They were trapped.
A hundred French horsemen were ready to follow along the path, but the English had dismounted and made a shield wall, and the thought of hacking their way through that steel barrier persuaded the French to turn back to the tower where the enemy was more vulnerable. Archers were still shooting from its ramparts, but the Genoese crossbowmen were replying, and now the French slammed into the English men-at-arms drawn up at the tower’s foot.
The French attacked on foot. The ground was slippery because of the summer’s rain and the mailed feet churned it to mud as the leading men-at-arms bellowed their war cry and threw themselves onto the outnumbered English. Those English had locked their shields and they thrust them forward to meet the charge. There was a clash of steel on wood, a scream as a blade slid under a shield’s edge and found flesh. The men in the second English rank, the rear rank, flailed with maces and swords over their comrades’ heads. ‘St George!’ a shout went up, ‘St George!’ and the men-at-arms heaved forward to throw the dead and dying off their shields. ‘Kill the bastards!’
‘Kill them!’ Sir Geoffrey de Charny yelled in return and the French came back, stumbling in their mail and plate across the wounded and dead, and this time the English shields were not touching rim to rim and the French found gaps. Swords crashed onto plate armour, thrust through mail, beat in helmets. A few last defenders were trying to escape across the river, but the Genoese crossbowmen pursued them and it was a simple matter to hold an armoured man down in the water until he drowned, then pillage his body. A few English fugitives stumbled away on the farther bank, going to where an English battleline of archers and men-at-arms was forming to repel any attack across the Ham.
Back at the tower a Frenchman with a battle-axe swung repeatedly at an Englishman, cracking open the espalier that protected his right shoulder, slashing through the mail beneath, beating the man down to a crouch, and still the blows came until the axe had laid open the enemy’s chest and there was a splay of white ribs among the mangled flesh and torn armour. Blood and mud made a paste underfoot. For every Englishman there were three enemies, and the tower door had been left unlocked to give the men outside a place where they could retreat, but instead it was the French who forced their way inside. The last defenders outside the tower were cut down and killed, while inside the attackers began fighting up the stairs.
The steps turned to the right as they climbed. That meant the defenders could use their right arms without much encumbrance while the attackers were forever baulked by the big central pillar of the stairs, but a French knight with a short spear made the first rush and he disembowelled an Englishman with the blade before another defender killed him with a sword thrust over the dying man’s head. Visors were up here, for it was dark in the tower, and a man could not see with his eyes half covered with steel. And so the English stabbed at French eyes. Men-at-arms pulled the dead off the steps, leaving a trail of guts behind, and then two more men charged up, slipping on offal. They parried English blows, thrust their swords up into groins, and still more Frenchmen pushed into the tower. A terrible scream filled the stairwell, then another bloodied body was hauled down and out of the way: another three steps were clear and the French shoved on up again. ‘Montjoie St Denis!’
An Englishman with a blacksmith’s hammer came down the steps and he beat at French helmets, killing one man by crushing his skull and driving the others back until a knight had the wit to seize a crossbow and sidle up the stairs until he had a clear view. The bolt went through the Englishman’s mouth to lift off the back of his skull and the French rushed again, screaming hate and victory, trampling the dying man under their gore-spattered feet and carrying their swords up to the very top of the tower. There a dozen men tried to shove them back down the steps, but still more French were thrusting upwards. They forced the leading attackers onto the swords of the defenders and the next men clambered over the dying and the dead to rout the last of the garrison. All the men were hacked down. One archer lived long enough to have his fingers chopped off, then his eyes prised out, and he was still screaming as he was thrown off the tower onto the waiting swords below.
The French cheered. The tower was a charnel house, but the banner of France would fly from its ramparts. The entrenchments had become graves for the English. Victorious men began to strip the clothes from the dead to search for coins, when a trumpet called.
There were still some Englishmen on the French side of the river. There were horsemen trapped on a patch of firmer ground.
So the killing was not done.
The St James anchored off the beach south of Calais and ferried its passengers ashore in rowboats. Three of the passengers, all in mail, had so much baggage that they paid two of the St James’s crew to carry it into the streets of the English encampment where they sought the Earl of Northampton. Some of the houses had two storeys, and cobblers, armourers, smiths, fruiterers, bakers and butchers had all hung signs from their upper floors. There were whorehouses and churches, fortune-tellers’ booths and taverns built between the tents and houses. Children played in the streets. Some had small bows and shot blunt arrows at irritated dogs. The nobles’ quarters had their banners displayed outside and mail-clad guards standing at their doors. A cemetery spread into the marshes, its damp graves filled with men, women and children who had succumbed to the fever that haunted the Calais swamps.
The three men found the Earl’s quarters, which was a large wooden dwelling close to the pavilion that flew the royal flag, and there two of them, the youngest and the oldest, stayed with the baggage while the third man, the tallest, walked towards Nieulay. He had been told that the Earl had led some horsemen on a foray towards the French army. ‘Thousands of the bastards,’ the Earl’s steward had reported, ‘picking their noses up on the ridge, so his lordship wants to challenge some of them. Getting bored, he is.’ He looked at the big wooden chest that the two men were guarding. ‘So what’s in that?’
‘Nose pickings,’ the tall man had said, then he shouldered a long black bowstave, picked up an arrow bag and left.
His name was Thomas. Sometimes Thomas of Hookton. Other times he was Thomas the Bastard and, if he wanted to be very formal, he could call himself Thomas Vexille, though he rarely did. The Vexilles were a noble Gascon family and Thomas of Hookton was an illegitimate son of a fugitive Vexille, which had left him neither noble nor Vexille. And certainly not Gascon. He was an English archer.
Thomas attracted glances as he walked through the camp. He was tall. Black hair showed beneath the edge of his iron helmet. He was young, but his face had been hardened by war. He had hollow cheeks, dark watchful eyes and
