Warlord(15)

I could hear noises of approval all along the battlements – not exactly cheers, but a pleasing mumble of approbation.

‘My friends, a storm is coming, the bitter storm of battle. Those high and mighty Frenchmen think that they can run over us, and stamp us into the dust. But they are wrong. I swear to you, on my honour as a knight, that we can hold them; and we can beat them – but only if you will fight like lions. So, I ask you: Will you fight?’

There was a muted rumble of assent. I repeated myself, louder this time. ‘Will you fight?’

A shout came back at me, and I believe every man on those battlements replied in the affirmative.

Once again I asked: ‘Will you fight?’

And the answer was a deep roar flung back at me from more than a hundred lusty throats. It sounded like a mountain being torn up by the roots: ‘We. Will. Fight!’


The enemy host formed up just out of bow-shot, about five hundred men in four divisions – or battles, as these formations are called. On the left and right flanks stood great blocks of enemy foot soldiers, perhaps a hundred and fifty men in each, dismounted knights and men-at-arms. Even at three hundred yards distance I could see that they carried long ladders, and it was plain that they meant to scale the walls both to the right and left of the gatehouse at the same time. In the centre, I saw with a sinking heart a huge black shape, at least thirty foot long, with a swarm of men fussing around it with ropes and pulleys attaching it to an enormous wheeled cradle. It was a felled tree-trunk, a battering ram, its hammer end sheathed in beaten iron. Nearby, carpenters were constructing a pointed roof with steeply sloping sides, tiled with wooden shingles – this was known as a penthouse – and its role was to shield the men who would swing the heavy ram against the front gate from our arrows. Clearly the central battle intended to come straight through the front door, smashing it to kindling in the process. And with that great ram, they might easily do it. Behind the battering ram was a battle of knights on horseback, a hundred men strong, beautifully arrayed, helmet plumes nodding, spear pennants flying, the trappers of the big horses bright splashes against the drab trampled field. When the gates of Verneuil had been smashed open and our brave men on the battlements overrun, these gaudy horse-borne killers would ride into the castle and complete the slaughter with lance and sword.

However, my mood of reckless cheerfulness had not deserted me. I was fairly certain that we were doomed, but there was still a chance of survival – and, as I had said to Sir Aubrey, if God willed that we die, we would make a fight of it that would live on in song and legend for ever. And two things were in our favour: as far as I could tell, King Philip was not attempting any subtle manoeuvres – he was not bothering with any further artillery bombardment; he was just coming straight at us in overwhelming strength; and, the second and more important point was, we had an ample supply of arrows.

I stripped all the men from the rear of the castle, leaving one single man to watch in case of an attack over the River Avre. I posted ten men-at-arms on the western wall, ten on the eastern, and kept the archers on the two northern corners of the castle. The rest of the fit men, about sixty in total, I divided between myself and Sir Aubrey and we took up our positions on either side of the main gate; myself on the left, Aubrey on the right.

I had not expected subtlety from King Philip, and I did not receive it. I had barely organized my handful of men, and made sure they had two or three javelins apiece, when the trumpets and drums started up and the two massive squares of men on the left and the right of the French lines started moving forward. At two hundred yards, when you could clearly hear the chink and stamp of three hundred marching men, I nodded to the vintenar of the archers of the north-western corner of the castle, a steady young man named Peter, and watched with pride as, with a great creaking of wood, these twenty men drew back their massive yew bows until the flights of their arrows tickled their right ears, and loosed a small grey cloud of shafts into the clear spring air.

The arrows punched down on to the enemy like deadly hail, rattling off shields and helms but sinking deeply into flesh wherever they found a gap in the armour. The French began to die. Men dropped by the killing shafts were trampled by their fellows; others, screaming in pain from an embedded missile, staggered out of the ranks, bleeding and clutching at the feathered shafts that sprouted from their bodies. But after the first barrage, the French held their shields above their heads and crowded tightly together, and my archers had time for only one more volley before the attacking French were given the signal to charge. Suddenly the enemy were running at us as fast as their legs would carry them, ladders to the fore, straight at the castle walls. My archers loosed once more, and I saw another handful of men falling, dying, skewered by the yard-long shafts, but nothing could stop their momentum now. In what seemed like a few brief moments the French men-at-arms were crowding under the very walls of the castle and staring up at us with pale, furiously frightened faces, as I shouted for javelins to supplement the arrow storm and we rained down death from above into the jostling, heaving mass of yelling foemen below.