‘What news of the King of England?’ I asked my companion. ‘Will he attack here?’
‘Oh, he is still in Barfleur, we are told, marshalling his forces. His rabble of an army, many of them no more than filthy paid men, routiers and the like, is far away …’ said St Geneviève with a dismissive roll of his shoulders.
I could hear the company coming up on to the ridge behind me, and out of the corner of my eye I could see Hanno fiddling with something out of sight, apparently a loose strap on the far side of his saddle. My own right hand went to the belt at my waist. Before me, spread out in a wide semicircle, was the encampment of the soldiers of King Philip – all two thousand of them – a great swathe of drab blue tents and brightly coloured pavilions and browny-green brushwood and turf shacks, a spill of campfires, a smear of grey smoke, the mounds of fresh earth from the siege workings, neat lines of tethered horses, stacks of fodder, weapons, shields and spears, and piles of baggage. Beyond the army, I could see the fortress of Verneuil, a grey, stone-walled block crouched on the north bank of the River Avre, with four square towers, one at each corner, and a large wooden gate in the centre of the front wall. A gaudy red-and-gold flag fluttered from a squat stone keep in the middle of the castle, and I knew that Hanno had spoken true: the little garrison was still bravely defying the King of France and all his legions.
‘What was that you said?’ I cupped my left hand to my ear and leaned forward from the back of Shaitan towards the knight. ‘What did you say just then about the English?’
The knight looked perplexed. He leaned towards me in the saddle and enunciated loudly and clearly as if I were an imbecile. ‘I said: King Richard is in Barfleur – those cowardly English rascals are still many leagues away.’
‘Let me tell you a secret,’ I said quietly, leaning even further towards him and placing my left hand in a companionable fashion on his right shoulder. Obligingly, he bent his head to me until it was only inches from mine.
‘They are not.’ And I swung my right hand up, hard, and slammed the point of my misericorde, my long killing dagger, through the soft skin under his chin and on, up through the root of his tongue and the roof of his mouth and deep into his skull. His whole body jerked wildly upwards with the force of my sudden blow, but I kept him firmly in the saddle with my left hand on his shoulder. His eyes, massive with shock and pain, stared into mine as he took leave of his life. He coughed once, expelling a great scarlet gobbet of blood, and his hands scrabbled briefly at my right fist on the handle of the long blade still embedded under his chin, then he very slowly slid over backwards out of the saddle and away from me, hitting the earth like a loose sack of turnips, his tumbling fall tearing my dagger free from his throat.
‘Perfect,’ said Hanno, grinning at me savagely from his saddle and displaying his awful rotting teeth. He wrenched his own small hand axe from where it was embedded in the top of the second knight’s spine and callously kicked the unstrung, speechless, dying man out of the saddle. ‘A perfect kill, Alan!’ Hanno it seemed was very pleased with my performance. ‘A soldier should be very happy to die from such a perfect strike. I teach you well.’
Neither of our victims had made more than a moan of complaint before we sent them to God. My mounted company was coming up the slope at a fast canter and we barely paused once they reached the top of the low hill. ‘Now,’ I shouted to the oncoming horsemen, their young faces rosy with the light of imminent battle, ‘now, we ride for our lives – ride for the castle gate, don’t stop for anything. Ride as if the Devil himself were on your heels!’
Chapter Two
We charged down that slight slope in two loose packs: the light cavalry – the mounted men-at-arms with their long lances – in the first group, the horse archers and our few pack animals, led by Thomas my squire, behind them. The plan, if our crude manoeuvre could be described as such, was for us to sweep down the slope, gallop across the trampled fields of wheat before the castle and ride directly up to its gates, which were about eight hundred paces ahead of our horses’ noses. The fifty lancers in the vanguard of our company were a hammer blow designed to smash the enemy out of our way and clear the path for the mounted archers and baggage animals, and then it would be down to speed and brutal sword-work as we all tried to cut our way through the entire French army. Trying not to remember that there were two thousand enemy soldiers between us and safety, I gripped my well-trained destrier Shaitan hard with my knees, couched my lance, shouted my war cry: ‘Westbury!’ and spurred down the slope at the head of the first wave of our men. The cavalrymen immediately behind me were screaming and whooping too; and with the pounding of the horses’ hooves, we made a spectacular and noisy entrance to the battlefield as we charged down on to the flat land before the castle – and yet the enemy were initially very slow to react. The murders of the two knights on the ridge had gone unnoticed, it seemed, and the first that the French soldiery knew of our attack was the sight of fifty spear-wielding, screaming men on fast horses thundering down the gentle slope into their midst.