Bernard Cornwell - 1356 (Special Edition)

And the crossbows shot.

Dozens of crossbows, kept dry because their archers were in the upper floors of houses close to the wall. The bolts slashed through the rain, and the first archers were being thrown backwards by the force of the missiles. A couple of men tried to reply with their long war bows, but the damp strings had stretched and the arrows fell feebly short of the wooden wall that suddenly bristled with men holding axes, swords, and spears.

‘Jesus,’ the prince cursed.

‘Another fifty paces,’ Burghersh said, meaning that in another fifty yards his archers would be able to shoot into the bourg , but the crossbows were spitting quarrels too fast. The prince saw a man struck in the face, saw the blood misting sudden and almost immediately washed out of the air by the rain as the man fell back and splashed into the flood with a short black bolt protruding from an eye.

‘Call them back,’ the prince commanded.

‘But …’

‘Call them back!’

Burghersh shouted an order at his trumpeter who sounded the retreat. The wind and rain were loud, but not loud enough to drown the jeers of the defenders.

‘Sire! You’re too close!’ the prince’s companion insisted. He was Jean de Grailly, the Captal de Buch, a Gascon who had followed the prince from his lavish tent. ‘You’re too close, sire!’

‘There are four hundred men closer than I am,’ Edward said.

‘You’re wearing a red cloak, sire. It’s called a target.’ The captal spurred his own horse next to the prince’s. ‘Bastards,’ he spat. He was as young as the prince, a black-browed young man with intense dark eyes and, despite his youth, he had a formidable reputation as a leader of men. He had brought his own followers out of Gascony, all of them wearing his badge of five silver scallop shells on a black cross displayed against a field of gold. His horse wore the badge, and his cloak was striped black and yellow, making him as prominent a target as the prince. ‘If a bolt hits you, sire,’ he said, but did not finish the sentence because a bolt hissed close to his face, forcing him into an involuntary flinch.

Prince Edward was watching the archers and men-at-arms struggle back through the watery mud. ‘Sir Bartholomew!’ he called to Burghersh, who had ridden a few paces closer to the wading men.

‘Sire?’

‘The bastard who told you they’d retreated. Where is he?’

‘At my quarters, sire.’

‘Hang him. Hang him slowly. Make it very slow.’

A crossbow bolt struck the marshland just in front of Foudre and tumbled in a spray of water past the horse’s hooves. Two more missiles came close, but still the prince would not move. ‘They can’t see me running away,’ he told the captal.

‘Better to run away than die, sire.’

‘Not always,’ the prince said. ‘Reputation, my lord, reputation.’

‘Being dead before your time isn’t the way to great reputation,’ the captal said.

‘My time isn’t now,’ the prince said. ‘I had my fortune told in Argenton.’

‘You did?’

‘A filthy crone, she was, but folk said she sees the future. She smelled like a cesspit.’

‘And what did she say?’

‘She said I was destined for marvellous things,’ the prince said.

‘Did she know you were the Prince of Wales, sire?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Then she’d hardly say you were going to die in a mucky rainstorm a week later, would she? The better the fortune they give the better you pay them. And I’ll wager you were generous?’

‘I think I was, yes.’

‘And most likely one of your courtiers told the crone what to say. Did she say you’d be lucky in love?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘That’s an easy prophecy to give a prince. A prince can look like a toad and they’ll still spread their legs.’

‘God is indeed good,’ the prince said happily. Scarlet dye was leaking from his hat and making faint trickles on his face so that he looked as if he was bleeding.

‘Come away, sire,’ the captal pleaded.

‘In a moment, my lord,’ the prince said. He was determined to wait until the last Englishman or Welshman had retreated past his horse.

A crossbowman on the upper floor of a leather-worker’s house that lay close to the southern gate had seen the two horsemen’s rich cloaks. He wound the handles of his weapon, drawing the cord back inch by slow inch, tensioning the wood and metal bow that creaked as it took the enormous strain of the thick cord. He felt the cord click over the pawl that held it, then searched through his bolts to find one that looked sharp and clean. He laid it in the groove, then rested the weapon on the casement sill. He sighted it. He noted that the wind was gusting hard from left to right and so he edged the weapon slightly leftwards. He put the stock against his shoulder, took a breath and felt for the trigger with his right hand. He waited. The horsemen were not moving. The foot soldiers were fleeing, some were falling as the bolts struck through leather or mail to pierce bone and flesh, but the crossbowman ignored them. He sighted on the red cloak again, raised his aim very slightly to allow for the missile’s fall, steadied himself, held his breath, and pulled the trigger. The crossbow thumped into his shoulder as the bolt sped away, a black streak in the torrential silver rain.

‘Maybe the rain will stop tonight,’ the prince said wistfully.

The crossbow bolt went between his right thigh and the saddle. It cut the fine cloth of his hose without scratching his skin, it pierced the saddle’s thick leather, was slowed by the wooden frame and finally jarred against one of Foudre’s ribs. The horse whinnied and shied away from the pain. The prince calmed the stallion. ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘two inches higher and I’d be singing in the front row of the choir.’

‘Sire,’ the captal said, ‘you can punish me for this, but I don’t want to lose you.’ He leaned over, took hold of Foudre’s bridle, and dragged the prince back towards the willows. The prince called encouragement to the defeated foot soldiers as he allowed himself to be pulled out of danger.

‘Tomorrow,’ he called, ‘tomorrow we’ll have our revenge! Tomorrow we’ll sack Tours!’

Yet the next dawn brought no reprieve. The wind still howled across the wet land and the rain fell and the thunder bellowed and lightning tore the sky. God, it seemed, wanted Tours to be safe. He wanted to trap the English and their Gascon allies south of the River Loire. And the next day after that, because to remain still was to invite the French to surround them, the prince’s army turned back towards the south.

The retreat had begun.

The weapons were stored in the dungeons beneath the keep of Castillon d’Arbizon’s castle. There were five cells there, and one of those was occupied by Pitou, who was waiting for his father to send Thomas’s men back from Montpellier. Two other cells were empty. ‘I put the drunks in those,’ Thomas explained to Keane.

‘Jesus, they must be full all the time.’

‘Rarely,’ Thomas said, leading the Irishman into the largest cell, which was his makeshift armoury. The two wolfhounds sniffed in the passageway, anxiously watching Keane as he ducked into the cell. ‘They know they can get drunk as much as they like,’ Thomas went on, ‘but not when they’re supposed to be sober.’ He raised the lantern and hung it on a hook embedded in the ceiling, though the flickering candle gave small light. ‘You stay alive by being good,’ he said.

‘By being sober?’ Keane sounded amused.

‘By being good,’ Thomas said, ‘by practice, by being fast, by being strong enough to pull a bow or carry a heavy sword. Weapons need skills and the man you end up fighting might have been practising those skills for twenty years so you have to be better. If not, you’re dead. And out here? We’re a small garrison surrounded by enemies, so we have to be the best.’