A Flight of Arrows by A.J. MacKenzie (most recommended books txt) 📗

Holland pushed his visor up. ‘Eu wishes to surrender? To me?’

‘Yes,’ Merrivale said.

Holland closed his eye, and for a moment Merrivale wondered if he intended to refuse. Then he opened his eye and smiled broadly. ‘Of course,’ he said, and he turned to his esquire. ‘Go and find my lord of Warwick. Tell him the battle is over. The city is ours.’

One by one the defeated men came down the stairs, handing over their swords. Eu was the last but one, and when he saw Holland, he unbuckled his sword belt and knelt and laid it at the English knight’s feet. With surprising kindness, Holland took the other man’s hand and raised him up, handing back his sword. ‘Fortune did not smile on you today, Raoul,’ he said.

‘Whereas it glows on you like the sun, my friend. I think you will achieve all that you desire now. I give you my parole that I will not attempt to escape.’

‘Of course. Is there anyone else inside?’

‘There is still one,’ the herald said.

Slowly, dragging his feet as if he was suddenly very weary, Macio Chauffin stepped out of the tower into the light, holding his sword belt in one hand. He had closed his visor to hide his face, but the mastiff on his surcoat was plain for everyone to see. Holland drew his breath with a sudden sharp hiss. But before he could move, Matthew Gurney stepped forward and took Chauffin’s sword.

‘Well met, Macio,’ he said softly. ‘Welcome home.’

12

Caen, 26th of July, 1346

Early afternoon

For Caen, the agony had only just begun.

The prisoners were led away, Holland walking beside the Count of Eu and both talking cheerfully. They might have been discussing the weather, the herald thought. Chauffin followed them, silent, head down. The houses on the bridge still burned, and down in the Odon bodies drifted on the tide. Up by the barricade, men were already stripping the corpses of the dead.

Chauffin had lied, repeatedly. He had lied about not knowing who Bray was, he had lied about not recognising Holland’s archers, and he had lied when he said Holland was not a traitor. What game Holland and Eu were playing, and why the count had insisted on surrendering to him, Merrivale did not know. But he was certain now that Bate and his men had killed Edmund Bray, and he was certain too that Thomas Holland was responsible.

Roger Mortimer had taken no prisoners. He stood, still holding his sword in his hand, staring at the bodies around the barricade. The marks and bloodstains on his armour showed he had been in the thick of the fighting, but now the fierce rush of battle was wearing off and reaction was setting in. Merrivale tapped him on the shoulder. ‘I need your help.’

Mortimer looked at him wearily. ‘What is it?’

‘I know who killed your friend. Come with me.’

He did not know where Bate was, but he knew how to find him; anywhere plunder could be found, Bate would be there. Followed by Mortimer, he walked away from the bridge and the dead men, down through the pall of smoke hanging over the streets of Saint-Jean. Flames roared, and he heard the sound of screaming men and women.

A man-at-arms came out of the smoke, sword in hand, and Mortimer moved up quickly on Merrivale’s shoulder, but then they saw the colours, red eagles on white, and relaxed a little. Nicholas Courcy walked forward, followed by Donnchad and the rest of the gallowglasses, their leather armour battered and some of them bleeding. They too had been in the thick of the fighting.

‘Herald. What are you doing here?’

‘I am looking for Bate,’ Merrivale said. ‘Have you seen him?’

‘I know where he is, yes.’ Courcy hesitated. ‘It will not be pleasant.’

‘That is to be expected. Take me to him.’

Caen had resisted, and so, according to the laws of war, Caen was being ravaged. Over and over again the question ran through the herald’s mind. Why had Eu come out of the castle to defend the city? What he had said yesterday was correct; with four thousand men, he could have held the castle until the royal army arrived. Instead, he had chosen to make his stand in the most indefensible quarter of the city, Saint-Jean.

I may have need of your services before this is over. Had Eu intended all along that Caen should fall? Had he sacrificed the city and allowed himself to be captured?

They found the first bodies of the townspeople soon after, men and some women too, lying in the street or the gutter where they had been shot or cut down. Some had been stripped; the clothing of the others was too mangled and bloodstained to be worth salvaging. Mortimer stopped for a moment, staring in horror at the dead women, and the herald touched his arm. ‘Come. There is nothing we can do for them.’

‘Why kill the women?’ Mortimer asked.

‘Some of our boys broke into Saint-Jean through a postern gate,’ Courcy said. ‘It was undefended. When the people realised our troops were inside, they came out of their houses and started fighting. Some of the women took up arms alongside the men.’

‘Arms. Wooden mallets and besoms against spears and longbows,’ Mortimer said. ‘They didn’t have a chance.’

Donnchad growled deep in his throat. ‘Ní dhéanfadh ach na Sasanaigh mná a mharú.’

Courcy shook his head. ‘No, my friend. It is not only the English who slaughter women. They have been men’s victims since the beginning of time.’ He looked at Mortimer. ‘This is your first war, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ More corpses lay in the street ahead, a man lying across the threshold of a door, another woman hanging over a windowsill above him, body pierced by arrows. Mortimer swallowed. ‘I suppose I will get used to it.’

‘Pray to God you do not,’ Courcy said.

The square church tower of Saint-Jean loomed out of the smoke. ‘Bate’s men were working their way down this street when I saw them,’ Courcy said. ‘I expect