English Channel, Seinte Gryfys, Late September 1346

On the day of their capture, Berenger Fripper wiped the salt spray from a face burned brown and leathery, and kicked the writhing figure at his feet.

‘Get up, Clip, you whining excuse for a man! I’ve seen better-looking turds in the midden. Get back on your damned feet.’

‘We’ll all be killed, ye mad bastard, Frip! Let me die in peace. Ach, you don’t understand. My head is a’ full of pain, man.’

‘You shouldn’t have gone thieving, then,’ Jack Fletcher said unsympathetically, aiming a kick of his own at the man’s scrawny backside.

‘I was trying to get hold of some food for you!’

‘You were seeing what you could thieve for your own benefit, more like,’ Berenger said.

‘You never complained when I brought you a squab or a barrel of ale, did you.’

‘We never had to go and search for you before,’ Jack said.

‘If you were real comrades, you’d have helped find the man and avenge this,’ Clip said bitterly.

Berenger was about to kick Clip again for the fun of it, when a sudden roll made him lose his balance. As he grabbed a rope, his belly clenched with the sudden need to puke.

Cog, he thought with disgust. A rotten, stinking, leaking bucket, rather. The air about the deck was fetid with the stench from the bilges, and the only reason it was safe from fire was that the whole vessel was so old that the timbers were themselves sodden. As the waves caught at her, she wallowed like a sow in mud. This wasn’t a fighting ship: she was about as much use as a pastry bascinet. If the galley behind them caught up and accidentally rammed her, the hull would crumble like a dropped egg.

They were here on this godforsaken tub to help bring supplies. The last few ships heading for Villeneuve-la-Hardie, the vast English encampment outside Calais, had been attacked by the French or their Genoese mercenaries, and someone had decided that it would be sensible to install archers on the fleets coming to supply the English.

Today Berenger’s men were on duty. Again. It made him wonder whether someone in his vintaine had offended a lord or some vindictive petty official. It was unreasonable that they kept being given the shit duties.

He felt a man slam into him, hard, and almost let go of the rope.

‘Watch it!’ he snarled.

‘I’m sorry,’ Pardoner gulped, his own face blenched and greasy with incipient sea sickness. ‘I didn’t mean to . . .’

‘Shut up. Just keep hold of something. Hit me like that again, and I’ll be pushed over the rails.’

He shoved the raw recruit back towards the rails, where Pardoner soon joined two others, Turf and the Saint, in emptying his belly. Berenger knew that if he were to go too close to them, he would soon be throwing up alongside them. The odour of vomit could do that to you.

A shipman hurried past, and three others were hauling on a rope as the shipmaster bellowed, his voice carrying clearly even over the howling and hissing of the wind. A fresh bout of nausea burned deep in Berenger’s guts as another man barged into him.

‘Look where you’re going, Tyler,’ Berenger grunted. He clung to the wale as the cog bucked, rearing over a high wall of water. She hesitated at the summit, and then plunged sickeningly, lurching to one side as she fell. Berenger was convinced the ship would continue to plummet, down and down, until she landed on the sea bed, but somehow she stopped at the trough and flung him to the other side of the deck, as though, like a small dog, the cog wanted to shake herself dry.

There were twenty-five ships all told in this fleet. The first convoy were bearing fresh soldiers, food, clothing and boots for the men besieging Calais. Standing here, Berenger could see them streaming away to the north and the south, a line of old cogs and fishing boats, all rolling and pitching in the grey seas. He wondered how many men were chucking their guts up on each of them. Probably as many as on this ship, he thought.

The stench of vomit came to him and he had to turn and stare at the horizon to distract himself, cursing his luck once more. Sitting out here on this lump of floating crap, waiting for the wave that would overwhelm them all, or for the first of the attacks that must surely come, he felt way out of his depth. God’s truth, it was enough to make you throw up.

He looked ahead. John of Essex was up there at the prow, holding on to a rope and moving with the ship like a shipmaster born at the base of a mast. Gritting his teeth, Berenger made his way in stages to his side.

‘Hello, Frip. Isn’t this great?’ the man said enthusiastically.

Berenger disagreed. He saw ships yawing and pitching and felt his own stomach lurch in response. ‘Yes,’ he lied.

‘You know, I’ve always wanted excitement. Where I was born, my father never travelled further than five leagues from home. Did I tell you about him? He was a tanner, and a good one. I could have followed him in that trade, but . . . well, have you ever smelled the tanneries?’ He made a face.

‘Once smelled, never forgotten,’ Berenger said.

‘That’s right. When you’ve got piss and dogshit all mixed up, and worked with it a while, spreading it over the skins . . . well, some men don’t mind it, but for me, soon as I could, I ran away. I wanted adventure. I would never have got that back at home. I knew it would be different here.’

Berenger’s mind was fixed on the image of dogs turds and urine. He swallowed down his latest bout of nausea and said hollowly, ‘Adventure?’

His latest recruit gave a smile that made him look like a fox: cunning, but wary. ‘I want to be able to make some decent money, not to end up a mere cobbler or tranter about my old home, without two farthings to rub together. One day, I’ll be important. You watch me. I could be a centener, a man-at-arms . . . even a knight.’

‘A knight?’ Berenger scoffed. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Why not? I’ve as much brain as most of them.’

‘You’re the son of a tanner, and you think you can get your hands on a knighthood?’

‘Others have. All I need do is show myself bold enough. I’ll do it.’

Berenger wondered about that. The man had ambition, but ambition was never enough. This fellow had a lot to live down already. Berenger knew that until recently, he too had been the vintener of a small party – before his sudden fall from grace. If others could have had their way, this adventure-seeking tanner’s son would even now be gracing the King’s three-legged hangman’s tree outside Villeneuve-la-Hardie.

‘I reckon you should keep yourself quiet and unnoticed,’ he said.

‘Why?’ The fellow bridled.

Berenger looked at him. ‘You were found guilty of riding out for personal profit when the orders were to remain with the army. You’ve already lost your rank and position – you’d be well advised to keep yourself inconspicuous.’

‘I wasn’t riding for my own purse,’ John of Essex said, and his face took on the obstinate expression Berenger was coming to recognise. ‘I thought I saw men in the farmstead, and I was right. They waylaid us.’

‘And so you were put in my charge and then we were all pushed up the gangplank to this old tub.’

‘That’s hardly my fault.’

Berenger looked at him. ‘Is it not? Perhaps someone in a position of power took a dislike to you and your actions.’

‘We rode into a small hamlet, got attacked and rode back. What is there in that to make someone want to punish me?’

Berenger frowned as he considered the boat now on their starboard side. It was a swift-moving galley, and it overhauled the rest of the convoy. At the prow was a man with long, mousy hair blowing in the breeze. ‘Who is that?’

‘Sir Peter of Bromley. Haven’t you heard of him? He used to be named Sir Pierre d’Agen, but he fell out with the French King. Something to do with the King’s latest favourite wanting some lands, and Sir Peter’s being the best available. So, to satisfy his friend, King Philip gave away Sir Peter’s lands and lost a loyal subject. Stupid prick!’

A shorter man clad in a cleric’s gown with a fringe of almost-black hair went to Sir Peter’s side and whispered in his ear.

Berenger watched as Sir Peter’s vessel overtook them at speed. The galley was soon far beyond them, racing on towards France as though flying over the waves.

It was after midday, and Berenger was breaking his fast with a chicken leg and quart of ale, when he heard Dogbreath calling to him.

‘Fripper, are they with us?’

Grumbling to himself about his poor eyesight, Berenger strained his eyes, peering in the direction Dogbreath was pointing. There were some hulls there, he felt sure, but a long way off. ‘What do you see?’ he said to Saint Lawrence, but the tall, fair recruit shook his head. His eyes were no better than Berenger’s.

‘Can’t you see?’

‘Yes, you fool’ Berenger snapped, ‘but I want to know what you—’

His words were suddenly drowned by the shipman at the masthead, who bawled down at the deck, ‘GENOESE! Galleys to port!’

All at once, the ship came alive. Shipmen ran up the ratlines to the yard and began to let out more sail, while the ship’s company rushed to their stations. Berenger and John of Essex made their way to the rail as the ship began to wallow, then with a creaking and cracking of ropes and timbers, she lurched to the larboard and began to hurtle through the waves. Their passage became more urgent, with a thrumming of ropes as the wind howled through them. Men temporarily forgot the slow agonies of their sickness as the ship strained like a greyhound at the leash. But she was an old, arthritic greyhound.

‘Oh, God’s ballocks!’ Clip groaned.

Berenger followed the direction of his gaze and saw a galley ram the side of a great cog. Arrows were flying, and there was a loud crash and burst of flame as the galley fired a small gonne. Amidst the thick, roiling smoke, Berenger saw a number of shipmen thrown aside. One man was flung over the wale into the sea. Then the galley reversed, and the cog immediately began to sink down in the water.

Another galley crushed the whole of a fishing boat. The vessel collapsed like a felt hat struck by a hammer. It was there one moment, and then the prow rose up to the sky, while the rear was smashed aside, and in an instant both parts were sunk. The galley did not falter, but continued on towards their own ship.

‘They’ll take us next,’ John of Essex said grimly.