The Medieval Murderers - The Deadliest Sin

‘The French did not have enough men. Nothing like enough. By that time, I suppose our King had some thirty thousand men under arms. It certainly looked it, with men all about the town itself, and more arriving every day. But the French had gathered together a scant twenty thousand.’

He nodded to himself pensively. ‘Even if they could synchronise their attack with a sortie from the men in the town, they wouldn’t have had enough. Their army was demoralised before they saw the English. Who wouldn’t have been, after the shattering defeat of Crécy? And while they may have hoped for a diversion from Calais itself, the people in the town were already enfeebled by the siege. Hunger and despair tore at them, and those who still had strength enough to wield a sword would still never have reached the lines of archers ringing the town.

‘So I say it again, they didn’t have enough. But from where we were, it looked like they had enough to trample us into the mud.’

The French King had to make a display, if only for his honour’s sake. So he marched his men up the road to the town. And the only thing stopping him at that moment was Sir John de Sully’s little force.

The old warrior was then in his sixties or so. His scarred and worn face displayed no fear that Janyn could see, only a boyish excitement. ‘We’ll stop them there,’ he said, pointing to a narrowing in the roadway.

The road leading to the higher ground outside the town had to pass through a wood before passing a small quarry. Beyond the quarry a hamlet had stood, but now the single stone building, the church, was the only one remaining. All the others had been burned, and even the church itself stood blackened and ravaged, like a sole surviving tree after a forest fire. The tower remained, but the building itself was a husk.

‘An ambush?’ Janyn asked.

‘Yes, Hussett. We’ll have our archers here at the front, and as they enter the quarry, we’ll loose the arrows. It’ll blunt their ardour, eh? The front ranks will run to cover in the quarry, and we can keep aiming arrows at the men coming. They will be pushed on by the press of men behind them, and we can kill many of them as they keep coming.’

Janyn nodded. It was the way the English fought. The archers stood their ground while their enemies ebbed under their withering assault. He moved off to prepare his men.

The two brothers were still there, and now he saw that when Pelagia went to speak with either, it was to Bill that she naturally turned. Walter was left sullenly glowering nearby while she spoke with his brother, her hand resting naturally on his forearm.

Janyn turned away. It was none of his business, but he disliked the idea that she might be breaking the close bond between the two lads.

The first that Janyn knew of the attack was a shrill scream in the night that jerked him from his slumbers.

They were all settled by early evening, his vintaine taking a patch of turf close to the wall of the old quarry. Their cart was nearby, and their weapons all laid close to hand. Bow-staves lay on the ground beside many of the archers, the strings held about their throats or kept in their purses, against the threat of the dew dampening them. As Janyn lay back, his head on his pack, he could see the men. Wisp and Barda stared into the flames from their campfires as they lay wrapped in blankets, and Bill and Walter were a little further off, their faces lost in the glare of the nearer fire. Janyn had dozed off staring at the coals and glittering sparks.

It was foolish to be so arrogant. A few successes against the French and all believed that they were secure, even here, lying out in the open. They should have known that even a cowed enemy would not hesitate to attack a force much smaller, and yet no one had thought to post a guard. All were asleep as the first cry came.

As soon as he heard the first high, piercing shriek, Janyn was up, flinging aside his blanket and bellowing at the other men to gather their weapons and follow him as he sprang forward.

The roadway was already a scene of confusion. Half-asleep archers were milling in the near darkness, while some few blundered around gripping blazing torches in their fists, rubbing the sleep from their eyes.

Janyn hurried to the line nearer the French army, but there was no sign of fighting there. All was peaceful, so far as he could see. A small group of French peasants lay hacked and bloody in a heap near the front line of the English, and two sentries were dead.

‘What happened here?’ he asked a man-at-arms.

‘We all heard a cry, and when we came here, we found this little force. They were probably just here to cut a couple of throats, steal a purse and make their escape. We were lucky: someone behind us heard them and gave the alarm.’

‘Hardly behind you,’ Janyn said. It was a stupid comment to make. Unless the French had infiltrated the English camps and killed someone in their midst. And yet that first cry, he could have sworn it had not come from this direction. ‘Must be the way the hill curls around us. The quarry. Rock can make noises seem to come from an odd direction.’

‘If you think so, Vintener,’ the man said without conviction.

‘Right,’ Janyn said, watching as the men pulled the bodies about, one with a war-hammer giving each skull a good blow for good measure. There was no time to take prisoners up here.

Looking at the dead, he felt sad. It was such a pathetic little group: farmers and peasants who were determined to strike their blow for the defence of their realm. When they were confronted and joined battle, they were soon forced to flee, leaving many of their companions dead or squirming in their own blood, their hatchets, bills and sickles left on the ground. If the French Army of the King was no match for the English force of arms, how could these fools have thought that they were capable of doing them damage?

When it was clear that all was safe and not further attacks could be expected that night, Janyn returned to the camp with his men, but when he looked around, he realised that the woman was not where she had hidden.

Pelagia was gone, and so was Bill.

Even now he shuddered at the memory of the shock that coursed through his body at the sight. Bill’s bed roll was left open just as so many others were all about; each man, hurrying to his feet, had thrown aside his blankets and grabbed his weapons in a hurry to get to the fight. But Janyn could not remember seeing Bill at the road or up at the front line. ‘Walter, where is your brother?’ he demanded.

‘I don’t know, Vintener,’ he said, but in his eyes there was a terrible anguish as he looked to where Pelagia had been lying.

‘Your brother took her, didn’t he? Christ’s bones, the shriek that woke us, that wasn’t the French, that was Bill. He’s killed her, hasn’t he?’

Walter hesitated. It was enough for Janyn. He had seen the look in Bill’s eyes over the last few days. The longing and desperation that had gradually turned to greedy hunger. He wanted the woman, Janyn was sure. And now he felt sure Bill had taken her.

‘Walter, if you find your brother first, you’d better make sure she’s all right, because if I learn Bill’s hurt her, I’ll see him hang!’ he said.

‘What do you mean? Bill wouldn’t hurt her any more than I would,’ Walter said haltingly. He was almost pleading.

‘You’d better hope that’s true if you don’t want to watch Bill hanged from a tree.’

‘What do you want to do, Jan?’ Barda asked. All banter had ceased at Janyn’s tone of voice. Now the men stood watchfully.

Where they were, the quarry wall encircled their little camp, but there was no way to tell where the two could have gone. Had they fled together, he would have left things as they were. The loss of one lovesick man was one thing, but if he had snatched Pelagia to rape her, Janyn would see to it that Bill paid.