Fields of Glory Read online

  ‘Not long now,’ Berenger said, more kindly.

  The others, he thought. They had all survived the sailing, thank the Lord. His glance ran over the vintaine. Although he wouldn’t let it show, Berenger felt a flare of pride to be leading them. At least they were all fighting men.

  Beside him, Grandarse stood rolling with the deck, hoarsely singing a crude marching song, his enormous belly constrained by his thick leather belt. Behind him stood Geoff, the square-faced, impassive son of a miller from Tewkesbury, flanked by the lanky form of the grey-eyed Jack Fletcher and the shorter, wiry Will the Wisp. Wisp was scrawny and looked always on the verge of toppling over, but he had muscles like steel cords and could have been pegged to the deck.

  Behind him, lumbering helplessly from one man to another with every plunge of the ship, and swearing all the while, was Clip, the shortest of them all. Clip had the pinched wizened features of a beggar. This last winter, the scurvy had laid hold of him, and now he had few teeth remaining. His brown eyes were red-tinged, and he tried to cower behind Wisp, keeping his scrawny arse sheltered from the water, but was flung around by the power of the waves like a rag doll.

  And then there were the others: Jon Furrier with the dropped shoulder, the always-limping Eliot, Oliver with the squint and fretful chewing of his inner lip, Matt, Walt, Luke and Gilbert and the rest. All waiting, all watching, veterans of battles in France and Scotland. Geoff met Berenger’s eyes and nodded, his mouth twisted at one side as usual. They would soon be fighting: the King had promised them. This was to be the chevauchée that proved once and for all that the English King was rightful King of France as well.

  Well, so long as there was wine and plunder in it, the men would be content: him too. Berenger narrowed his eyes against the spray. Since his parents’ death four and twenty years ago, he had spent his life searching for adventure. Now, perhaps, it was time to stop. He could buy a little house, find a woman. Brew ale, make friends, raise children. Aye – mayhap! he told himself sardonically.

  There was a moment or two of peace. Shipmen were up at the sail, hauling for dear life, and on a series of commands from the shipmaster, the vessel began to wallow, her speed cut as the sails were reefed. Soon they would be at the shore, and the tension amongst the ship’s company increased dramatically as they prepared to disembark. Bags and blankets were hefted, personal weapons tested in their sheaths, and men muttered prayers. Two near Berenger were murmuring as the beads of their rosaries slipped through their fingers.

  Berenger could see the waves ahead battering at the shallow sands. At least the rocks were over to the west of them now. This shoreline looked safer, with smoothly shelving sands that rose up gently to meet the small houses of the town itself. Berenger caught a glimpse of a steeple, a little row of fishermen’s houses, a low breakwater that enclosed a wide port, but then another wave was hurled into his face and blinded him. When he could look again, the beach was much closer.

  ‘Ready!’ he shouted, and as he looked across at his men one last time, the ship struck.

  There was a graunching rasp from deep within the bowels of the vessel, a sound felt through the feet, as though a monster was tearing through the hull. He was thrown onto Ed, the weight of the men behind them crushing them both. The planks of the deck were slick with water and piss and vomit and his boots slipped, but then the vessel lurched once more, and he found his foot struck the hull, and he could stand again.

  ‘With me!’ Berenger heaved himself onto the wale and stared down at the sea below. Beside him, Ed gaped at the drop before them. Berenger grunted to himself, hauled the lad to the gunwale and pushed him over, before closing his eyes and leaping down himself, grasping his sword’s hilt as he went. ‘Come on, you sons of whores!’

  It was further than he had realised, a good eight or nine feet, and the sea was five feet deep. His ankle twisted on a rock, but he refused to acknowledge the dull pain. Ed was already halfway to dry land, floundering through the surf, and Berenger made his way after him, splashing water high on each side as he swaggered towards the welcoming sands, sword held up at shoulder height. He’d have to clean and dry the blade, he told himself, and his pack would be soaked through. Ah, God, but it would be good to be on solid ground again! That ship had been an instrument of torture. He would never go aboard a ship again, not if he could avoid it.

  The waves sucked at his hosen as though trying to drag him under – but then he was into the shallows and up onto the sand. There was no time to pause here. He had his orders: his vintaine was to run on ahead and keep any enemy away while a bridgehead was established.

  His world was yet rolling about him. It was as if the land was still moving like the boat, and he had to fix his stare on the men jumping from the ships and making their way towards him to force his mind to accept that he was at last free from that tub.

  ‘Hoy, Fripper! Get your men up to the dunes there!’ Grandarse roared.

  Berenger nodded, and urged the men on with him, scrambling up the sand. Soon he and the others were huddled on a hillock from where they could see the land before them, while also watching the ships unloading their cargoes of men and matériel.

  ‘Have they all run away?’ Ed asked. He was shivering as he gazed about him. All around, the countryside looked empty. A flat land with thin reedy grasses stretched away into the distance; only a few thick stands of trees distracted his eye. One wood stood a short distance away to their right, while on the left was a village. He could see a church looming high over the huddle of buildings, but to his relief, there was no one about.

  ‘Aye, boy,’ Geoff chuckled drily, his face pulling oddly as he smiled. His jaw had been broken years before in a battle and had never properly mended. Ever since, his voice had been sibilant and slurred. ‘They heard you were coming, and hared off before you could get to them.’

  Berenger grinned to himself. Geoff was built like a bull. His arms thick as sacks of grain, his thighs the size of young oaks, and as strong. If the French were to run from anyone, it would be him. Geoff’s shrewd grey eyes were wrinkled in humour now as he glanced at the boy.

  ‘When will they come, then?’ Ed wanted to know. He was thirteen or so, a thin-faced boy with pale brown hair cut ragged and eyes that slid away rather than meet another’s.

  Berenger shrugged. ‘When they’re ready, boy.’

  Their personal gear was piled on the sand, while Clip knelt, muttering under his breath, trying unsuccessfully to strike a spark from flint and dagger to light a fire from the driftwood piled all about.

  ‘Get a move on, Clip. You think those French buggers will wait until you’re good and ready for ’em?’ Matt joked.

  ‘If ye think ye can light it faster, then you do it!’ Clip said with exasperation. ‘Come here and demonstrate your wondrous skills. Happen, if you breathe and fart on it, your hot air and wind will light the tinder faster than my flint.’

  Clip’s constant whine grated, but the others had grown accustomed to it over the years and now they laughed. He had kept up his customary wheedling and complaining through both misery and joy, and was unlikely to change now.

  ‘Just hurry up,’ Berenger said, wrapping his arms about his damp torso. ‘I need some warmth.’

  ‘We’ll be hot enough when the French army arrives,’ Jack said, and with that, the vintaine fell silent, stilled as they gazed at the lands all about them. Somewhere, out there, was an army preparing to throw them back in the sea.

  Sir John de Sully took the pewter goblet from his esquire and drank deeply.

  At five-and-sixty years old, Sir John was the oldest knight here. His first battle had been that bloody fiasco in Scotland, when the late King Edward II of inglorious memory had seen his men baffled by the traitor Bruce in the boggy wastes beside the Bannockburn. It was not a battle Sir John liked to recall. A knight should remember victories, not shameful disaster.

  He grunted and rubbed at his knee. A pain there had come on during the voyage – a tight stabbing whenever he
bent his leg. He had massaged the area with goose fat, but it seemed to do little good. He would speak to a leech when he found time.

  It was the way of things. He was an old man, and should have been pensioned off like an ancient warhorse by now: he would have been, were it not for the reputation he had gained. Sir John had been present at all the crucial battles since 1314. Sometimes he thought he was brought along because his kings viewed him as a mascot of good fortune. But while he had earned his retirement, there was a restlessness in his soul. His sword and mace had stabbed and crushed many skulls, but as soon as he had learned of this latest adventure, he had jostled for a place in the army.

  It was where he belonged.

  ‘Sir, your horse is ready,’ Richard Bakere, his esquire, said.

  Sir John tossed back his wine. ‘And so begins our campaign,’ he grunted as he made his way to the ladder at the forecastle.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Bakere.

  Bakere had been his esquire for six years now – a reliable young man, the son of a local baron, and determined to serve. Sir John knew the value of a trustworthy esquire, especially in times like this, when the trumpets blew.

  Sir John was lucky, living far from London in his two manors of Rookford and Iddesleigh. There he had been insulated from the King’s early years when young Edward III had been under the control of the avaricious Sir Roger Mortimer. But even there, ripples from the political storms had been felt. Afterwards King Edward had been forced to impose his will on the realm, going to the extreme of creating a new chivalric Order. It was enough to make older barons roll their eyes. A knight needed no fripperies of that sort: he only required a sharp sword.

  He’d seen enough kings: Edward I, the great warrior; his deplorable son, the second Edward. The barons had finally taken offence at his ridiculous extravagances – and those of Sir Hugh le Despenser, his reviled friend. There was a man who deserved his end, Sir John thought: hacked apart by a Hereford butcher.

  And now there was this third Edward. A man who believed in his ‘destiny’, and the prophecies that foretold his future: a ‘Boar’, like the ‘Boar from Cornwall’, it was said – King Arthur. He would be a great war-leader, and wear the three crowns of the Holy Roman Empire, and when he died, he would be buried in Cologne with the three Magi, who were also buried there.

  ‘Ballocks!’ Sir John muttered.

  The King wanted glory, and a glory-seeker was dangerous to all around him. Worse, Sir John was commanded to guard the King’s son, young Edward of Woodstock, which was sure to prevent Sir John from winning a good prize. Still, a knight’s first duty was service, as that of the people was to labour.

  Since the King had laid claim to the crown of France, the people could understand the reasons behind his crippling taxes. Nobody liked to give away a tenth of their wealth, but they could see their money going to the purchase of millions of arrows, tens of thousands of bow-staves and strings, supplies for siege engines, for wagons, carts and victuals.

  For although their King had come to France with the intention of proving his mettle many times in the last ten years, each time the French had retreated and refused his challenges, no matter how small the English forces. Instead, the French burned the lands all about, starving the English of supplies and forcing them to retreat while their King watched like the snake he was. Wary, cunning and duplicitous, Philippe waited, refusing the English the chance of an honourable settlement. It was shameful.

  Well, this time – this time – they would fight. Young King Edward would force a battle, and then perhaps he’d stop squeezing cash from poor rural knights like Sir John.

  Sir John’s face twisted in a sardonic grin. Aye, and pigs might sprout wings.

  As his ship heeled over, Archibald Tanner, the man nicknamed ‘the Serpent’ or ‘the Gynour’, amongst several less complimentary epithets, stared back past the ships waiting their turn to beach themselves, his hand resting on the nearest little barrel. It was coopered with hoops of willow rather than iron, an essential safety requirement – for a careless spark struck from a flint against a steel hoop would see the whole ship blasted to splinters. Those innocuous little barrels were filled with black powder.

  Up here, he had a fine view of the water, and Christ’s pains, it was hard to credit his eyes. He had never imagined that the King could command so many ships. They filled the bay as far as a man could see, bright flags fluttering gaily in the breeze, crimson, gold and blue. And on board, he had heard, there were some fifteen thousand souls – knights, men-at-arms, hobelars archers and infantry – a vast number of men and beasts.

  Archibald shook his bald head, his thick, greying beard moving with the wind. He wore his customary leather coif, a kerchief about his throat, and a thick sleeveless leather jack with a linen chemise beneath, all pocked and blackened with scorch-marks. Feeling for his short sword, he patted the cross and grinned. He was going to show the men here that a new age was dawning. Archers and knights belonged to the past. His was the new way of war, for Archibald, the Serpent, was a master of powder: black powder, the Serpentine powder that, when carefully tamped and rested, could hurl a stone ball or metal dart for hundreds of yards. With his little cannons firing balls of two and three inches diameter, he could destroy gates, walls, even men, in an onslaught that would send the King’s enemies fleeing in fear.

  It would be a hard task, but the gynour was confident. He would be crucial to the King’s success. There was no doubt about that.

  Rubbing his grimy face, he turned to see two sailors manhandling one of his barrels up a plank, ready to drop it.

  His face darkened instantly. ‘Hoy, you lurdans, take care with that! It’s worth more to the King than you and your entire ship! Damage that or break the barrel, and your head’ll be on a spike by evening as a sign to all fools to be more careful!’

  He didn’t point out that first the executioner would have to find all their body parts. If they carelessly struck a spark from their hobnailed boots and had a keg of his black powder blow up in their hands, a man would be hard put to find any pieces of them bigger than a penny piece.

  Sir John de Sully stood impatiently while casks and bales of provisions were laboriously offloaded.

  It was vital to get the horses and men off the ships so that the beach-head could be defended. While he stood watching, shipmen began to attack the caulking. The cog had massive doors in the hull to give access to the hold, and from here the horses could be released. Seals formed of thick ropes soaked in tar were pulled away, then the thicker pitch was scraped away with chisels, until the doors were exposed and the horses within could be seen.

  They were led one at a time down the ramp, to be saddled by grooms at the water’s edge. As Sir John watched, one of them slipped on the ramp, falling with a whinny of pain, plunging and rearing in the water. A hoof caught a groom, who fell instantly, his body bobbing on the water with arms outstretched like a crucifix, the blood swirling about his crushed head and turning the foam pink. The horse was eventually calmed, but the next too slid off the ramp, and this one broke a leg. The beast was brought limping to the shore, where a farrier felt the leg, then stood back and pole-axed it.

  Not Sir John’s brute, thank the Lord.

  His own horse came down next: Aeton. The great destrier was jerking his head up and down to tug his reins from the hands of the swearing shipmen. He was ever a vicious brute: keen to trample a man or bite his hand. In battle, he became almost uncontrollable, even when Sir John sat in the saddle attired in full armour. Aeton was born, and lived, only for battle.

  ‘Here, Aeton. Soon you will have enemies aplenty even for the fire in your belly,’ the man said with gruff affection. He took the halter and led Aeton away from the rolling thunder of the waves at the shore, through a milling pack of hounds, and past the horse slain by the farrier. At its side, a man-at-arms stood with tears flowing as he gazed down at the body of his mount. There would soon be many more mourning their horses, but no one mourned the groom dead
in the water, Sir John noted. It was natural enough. Every one of the men knew that they were here to fight, and possibly die. A horse could help them win victory, but one dead man was merely a corpse.

  Further up the beach, Berenger was past caring about the threat of a French army or even the rigours of command. Just now, all he cared about was Clip’s fire-making. After his immersion, he shivered with every breath of wind.

  The armada had sailed in absolute secrecy. Only the King and his closest advisers knew their destination. If the ships were separated, each shipmaster had written instructions as to where to rendezvous, but because of the risk of spies their letters were to be kept sealed until needed. To maintain that secrecy, the King had commanded that no ships were to leave English ports for another week after the fleet sailed. He did not want a captured Portsmouth fisherman giving away news of the fleet’s destination.

  Of course, amongst the sailors and men rumours of their landing-place had abounded, but Berenger was not convinced until he saw the stores being brought aboard. He had spoken to an old shipman, who told him knowledgeably that with all those goods the King must be intending a two-week journey at least.

  ‘There’s only one place takes that long,’ the old tar said knowingly. ‘Guyenne. You’ll be out there before long, boy. Burning your balls in the Gascon sun.’ He hawked and spat, and his faded blue eyes seemed to stare into the distance, past the grey, overcast sky and the steady rain. ‘You lucky bastard.’

  ‘My arse,’ Berenger muttered to himself.