The Earl of Locksley’s men, who were some of the freshest troops, had been given the task of patrolling aggressively beyond the River Epte, the traditional border between France and Normandy, and we sent out large parties of men forty or fifty strong to raid the farms and scout the land. And, more often than not, the King would join these tiring, dusty patrols, as if he were a young knight or squire of tender years and not the greatest of all the Christian monarchs and comfortably past his fortieth year.
It so happened that we were riding through a thick wood, a mile or so to the east of Boury; Robin, myself, Little John, Thomas and a score of Locksley men-at-arms and my ten Westbury fellows; together with Richard and a dozen of his younger household knights, when the King held up a hand and stopped us all. We were in thick woodland, unable to see beyond fifty yards in any direction, but the King said: ‘Listen!’ And we all dutifully strained our ears.
I could make out nothing at first, and then I caught it – a faint metallic jingling noise like a man idly playing with a large bag of silver. ‘Blondel, you’ve got young eyes, go forward on foot,’ said the King, ‘quietly now – go a hundred paces, see what can be seen, and report back.’
I slipped off Shaitan and handed the reins to Thomas, who was beside me looking grim and grown-up on his brown palfrey, a long lance in his right hand. I walked forward as quietly as I could, keeping behind the thicker trunks as the woodland petered out into scattered trees, and finally gave way to a wide fallow field.
And beheld an army.
I saw a long line of horsemen, mailed, armed and shod for war – hundreds of French knights in bright surcoats, the trappers of their destriers matching their riders’ attire. They were coming from the south-east, from Mantes, at a guess. The chinking noise had grown louder; it was the tinny sound of several hundred buckles, stirrups, spurs and assorted accoutrements clashing against iron mail. I was looking at the flower of French chivalry, coming north to challenge Richard’s bold intrusion, and push him back into his own lands. In the centre of the line, among a score or more of bright flags, in red and silver and green, I saw the white and gold fleur-de-lys of King Philip himself.
I made a rough count of the numbers of armoured knights and hazarded three hundred, but behind them came long lines of sergeants and mounted crossbowmen, and last of all blocks of marching infantry wielding spears. It was a horde – perhaps six or seven hundred strong. We could not possibly hope to face them in battle and triumph.
I made my way back to the King and said: ‘It is Philip, sire, and three hundred of his knights, coming up fast and heading towards Courcelles; if we are quiet, I believe we can make it to Boury and evade them, and we can send word to Courcelles to shut up their gates.’
‘What are you talking about, Blondel?’ said the King, frowning at me as if he genuinely could not comprehend my speech. ‘The enemy is before us; you say that thief Philip himself is there; and you want me to run away like a craven? What in God’s name is the matter with you?’
‘Sire, there are three hundred knights yonder, and as many men-at-arms; we are fewer than fifty men here – we cannot fight them,’ I said, but I knew the King tolerably well by then and the flesh all over my body was contracting, pimpling in excitement, fear and a little joy equally mixed, a coldness in my stomach, my cheeks flushed – it was madness, wonderful, magical, royal madness – for I knew exactly what the Lionheart must say.
‘Nonsense, Blondel, we have plenty of men for the task; we will attack at once and show these French fellows the true meaning of prowess.’ He turned to the youngest of his household knights, a nervous-looking youth, three or four years younger than I. ‘Sir Geoffrey, be so good as to ride to Boury; the Marshal is there. Tell him that I shall be attacking the enemy directly and would consider it a great favour if he would stir himself, sally out and join the fun.’
I caught Robin’s grey eye and he merely gave me a half-smile and a slight shrug of his shoulders. When the King commands, we his loyal men must obey.
‘Well, come on then,’ said Richard; he was grinning all over his face, a wolfish predatory expression that I had seen him wear many times before on the eve of battle. Richard was about to do what he had been born to do; what he loved to do more than anything else in the world: a glorious headlong charge into an unsuspecting enemy, followed by a great and terrible slaughter – hopefully a great and terrible slaughter of the French knights. Oddly, I found myself grinning like a moon-crazed maniac, too.
We bounded out of the woodland like a pack of starving wild beasts scenting their prey, fewer than fifty horsemen attacking an enemy ten times our number. To put it like that is to make it sound a desperate, foolish endeavour, a reckless gamble, but that does not do justice to our bold, but not completely brain-addled, leader. The enemy was spread out on the line of march, perhaps six or seven hundred men straggling over half a mile or more. We came boiling out of that wood in a tight, fierce knot and smashed into the centre of the enemy line, with precious little warning, bringing our furious blades to surprised and frightened men and cutting straight through the files of knights and squires, shattering them – it was as if an iron-bound mallet were swung against a long dry stick. King Richard led the charge, a dozen pounding heartbeats of pure exhilaration, and we crashed into the enemy ranks, screaming fit to burst our lungs, and the line of French horsemen disintegrated before us. My lance pierced a thin-faced squire just above the hip, the blade crunching through his young body and clean out the other side. I left the long ash shaft waggling in the air, the boy dying, white-faced with shock, and drew Fidelity. I saw that our charge had brought us right through the enemy line of march, sowing bloody disaster in our train, and we were now free and clear on the other side of the column. The enemy force had been cut cleanly in two by our assault. To the south were the mounted men-at-arms, and the plodding infantry, some being mercenaries and some mere militia, barely trained men recruited from the poorest stews of French towns that had been singed by the fires of war. They seemed terrified, stunned into immobility by our shattering eruption from concealment, although a few groups of more experienced men began to arrange themselves with a painful slowness into clumsy defensive formations. To the north, the tale was very different: there stood the cream of French chivalry, in all their gaudy, dangerous splendour. These heavily armoured aristocratic horsemen had immediately halted their march, turned to face us, and were forming up in their disciplined ranks with alarming speed. I saw that our scattered men, who had smashed so bravely through the middle of the French column, were soon to be charged in turn. Richard was shouting: ‘At them, at them! Before they recover!’ and gesturing with his sword at the French knights to the north of us, hundreds of them, who even now were ordering their neat lines, rank upon rank, knee to knee, lowering their lances, their horses taking their first steps towards us.