Kate Sedley - The Christmas Wassail

‘I understand your feelings, believe me,’ he said gently, ‘and I sympathize with them.’ He rose and poured out two glasses of wine, one of which he handed to me before resuming his seat. ‘But war, Master Chapman, is a brutal business and those of us who have been soldiers, particularly foot soldiers in the ranks, people like Ned and Tabitha, hold life cheaper than most others.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘Ned, yes. But that doesn’t apply to Tabitha.’

‘Most certainly it does.’ He sighed. ‘So many people think, mistakenly, that that French girl, the one they burned as a witch at Rouen, was the only woman ever to enlist as a soldier, masquerading in men’s clothing. There are dozens of them, I can assure you, in every army of every country throughout Europe. And those that do take up the calling make excellent soldiers. They are far more ruthless than men.’

I was amazed. The idea of women as fighters, braving dangers, brandishing and using weapons, accustoming themselves to the horrors and gory sights and sounds of battle, had never occurred to me.

‘And Mistress Warrener was such a woman?’ I asked, still struggling to come to terms with the idea. ‘A soldier?’

Master Tuffnel smiled gently. ‘Tabitha was one of the very best. Not only was she extremely courageous, but she was also a good captain. She cherished the men under her command; looked after them like a mother. She might have them flogged or their ears lopped for disobedience — indeed, I’ve seen her hang a man herself from the bough of a tree for whatever crime he had committed — but woe betide anyone else who laid a finger on them. And the offence she found the most unforgivable was cowardice, betrayal of one’s fellows.’

There was silence for a moment or two, the crackling of the logs on the hearth the only sound in the room, while I marshalled my thoughts and a pattern of events became clearer to me. I remembered Cyprian Marvell’s nocturnal visitor and his stubborn refusal to reveal what the man had wanted. He had not denied that it was one of the mummers nor that he had paid him money, but no more. Family honour was at stake. I raised my eyes to Master Tuffnel’s.

‘Am I to assume that Sir George Marvell stood accused of cowardice and betrayal?’ I asked at length. ‘And also Robert Trefusis?’

My host shook his head sadly. ‘Oh, never to their faces. Never officially. They remained heroes in the eyes of the world. Only those of us who were there knew the truth, and that included Tabitha and Ned Chorley.’

‘Who were where?’ I asked.

‘At the siege of Dieppe.’

‘Dieppe?’

‘Yes. Why? You sound as though the name means something to you.’

It did. Of course it did. The last piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. Alderman Trefusis had uttered the word ‘Dee’ as he lay dying. But not the name ‘Dee’, nor even the first syllable of the name ‘Deakin’, but the beginning of the word ‘Dieppe’. The word carved so savagely into Sir George’s chest was not ‘DIE’, but again the start of that same place name. My theory that the murderers had been interrupted had been correct: the letters ‘PPE’ should have completed their handiwork.

I looked up to find Master Tuffnel frowning at me in a puzzled fashion. Before he could say anything, however, I leant forward, my elbows on my knees, and said urgently, ‘Tell me about the siege of Dieppe.’

Old soldiers love telling tales of past glories, or even, as in this case, past defeats. He settled himself more comfortably in his chair and took a gulp of wine to ease his throat.

‘It was forty years ago this August just gone,’ he said. ‘The year of Our Lord One Thousand, Four Hundred and Forty-three. I know that for a certainty because I had just celebrated my thirty-second birthday. The town had been snatched from us in a daring raid some years before. I forget exactly when. In any case, it doesn’t matter. Suffice it to say that in the November prior to my account an English army under the command of the great Talbot of Shrewsbury, including among its officers myself and two of my closest comrades, Robert Trefusis and George Marvell, was at last sent to lay siege to Dieppe and win it back again. This host also counted Tabitha Warrener and Ned Chorley among its ranks. Ned was an archer.

‘We weren’t in any hurry. Talbot reckoned that King Charles was in no position to come to the relief of the town, and so it proved. A fort was built overlooking Dieppe — an immensely strong affair, like a small town itself — the artillery was hauled into position and we settled down to bombard the walls for as long as it took to force the citizens into surrender.’

Here, Master Tuffnel broke off, staring into the heart of the fire, seeing sights and hearing sounds that I was unable to share.

‘And did they?’ I prompted him.

He jumped. ‘What?’

‘Did the citizens of Dieppe surrender?’

‘Oh … Oh, no. By the following August, against all the odds, they were still holding out, still defying us, but getting near the end of their tether. We knew, because we had intercepted several of the messengers, that the city fathers were imploring King Charles to come to their relief, but none of us, least of all old Talbot, thought that their prayers would be answered. Life was quite pleasant. There was the occasional sortie against the town, but the gunners were doing most of the work. The rest of us diced, played cards, visited the camp whores, caught the usual diseases, slept, quarrelled … but in general were quite content to await the inevitable outcome.’

‘So what went wrong?’ I asked as once again he paused. ‘It’s obvious that something did.’

Cyprian Tuffnel gave a bark of laughter. ‘Oh, something went wrong, yes, indeed. In the middle of August, a few days before the Eve of the Assumption of the Virgin, our scouts brought us news of the approach of a French army under the command, not of King Charles, but of the Dauphin, Louis. That’s the King Louis who died this past year. I don’t know if you ever saw him or know anything about him?’

‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ I replied. ‘I saw him at a distance eight years ago on the bridge at Picquigny, but I was also once acquainted with a young woman whose father had served in Louis’s Scots Guard. She admired him greatly and thought him one of the cleverest, most shrewd men she had ever known, whose natural cunning made up for the fact that he was no soldier.’

My host nodded. ‘Your friend was right, but at the time I speak of no one, at least on the English side, was aware of his brilliant mind. All we knew was that he had a poor reputation in battle, that he dressed and looked more like a mountebank than a prince and was generally considered hopeless as a fighter. So when we stopped laughing, we just widened the ditches around the fort a little, altered the position of a few guns and calmly awaited his arrival. What our scouts hadn’t told us, because their information was faulty, was that Louis had with him Dunois, the Bastard of Orleans and the Count of Dammartin, a brilliant captain of the Ecorcheurs. He also had artillery.

‘The upshot was that we were taken entirely by surprise by the scale and ferocity of the attack, which was of sufficient strength to breach the walls of the fort and to enable a vast number of the French to get inside. By the time darkness fell we had just about managed to drive them out, but inside the fort it was a shambles. No quarter had been asked and no quarter had been given. The place was a charnel house and the atrocities committed on both sides had been vicious. Neverthless, we thought that was that: the French must surely have had enough — their casualties had been as great as ours — and they wouldn’t attack again.’ He took a deep breath before continuing, ‘That statement, however, is not quite true. I should have said that most of us thought that the French would not attack again. But there were a few so appalled by the day’s carnage that they decided not to wait and find out. Some time during the night they slipped out of the back entrance to the fort and disappeared into the darkness …’