There was an absence of firm ground on which [the English] could set up siege engines . . .
Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker
Loveday writhed beneath his attacker, gasping to fill his lungs with air as he scrabbled for his blade with his hand. It was out of reach. Panicking and straining to breathe, he somehow found the energy to punch the man in his ribs and arms.
The man on top of him was yelling in his ear, but Loveday had no idea what he was saying. Only when he had unleashed half a dozen blows did he realise the man he was battering was Millstone.
‘Calm down, for Christ’s sake,’ the burly stonemason was shouting. ‘Calm down! It’s me.’
Loveday dropped his arms. He croaked like a toad, still struggling for breath. ‘What in Christ’s name are you doing?’ he managed to say. Then, as Millstone rolled away, Loveday saw what lay where he had been standing.
A huge, rotten pig carcass, hurled from the walls above, lay burst open on the ground.
White ribs glistened where they had ripped through the skin. A neat row of little yellow teeth grinned from a flesh-stripped skull. It was as large as a man. It stank.
Despite himself, Loveday laughed. ‘That would have been some way to go.’
‘Aye,’ said Millstone. ‘Now get up. There’s plenty more ways to die yet.’
Loveday found his sword and stepped over the rank splatter of the pig, crouching as he moved, with his left arm curled over his head as though this would shield him. Millstone followed.
Someone yelled their names.
Millstone pointed – on the nearest barge, Tebbe was hunkered down, beckoning them urgently to join him in the bargeman’s shelter at the back of the craft. One man-at-arms was controlling the numbers of men trying to get on the barge. Another was sending climbers up the ladder in pairs. At the top of the wall, two young men were alternately hacking at defenders and ducking down beyond the range of the blows that were returned.
Tebbe was still shouting at Loveday and Millstone. ‘Get over here!’
Loveday pointed to the man-at-arms blocking anyone else from getting on the barge.
Tebbe coughed hard into the crook of his elbow. He shook his head. ‘Fuck him!’ he shouted. ‘Fucking get on!’
Loveday grimaced. Jumping on to the barge looked dangerous. But before he could argue further, Millstone had set off at a jog. The man-at-arms closest to Tebbe was arguing with a middle-aged, red-faced archer with a Cornish accent. Taking advantage of his distraction, Millstone leapt, surprisingly deftly, on to the back of the barge, and slid into the shelter beside Tebbe.
Smoke stung Loveday’s nose. Something somewhere was burning. It smelled awful.
From far away, on another side of the city, he heard the boom of cannon.
Then he stood at the edge of the barge, bent his creaking knees and jumped. When he landed, the barge wobbled. The man-at-arms holding the bottom of the ladder rounded angrily on him. But before he could berate the Dogs he was called back to the ladder, to help down the two attackers returning from their exertions at the top. Both had blood leaking from their heads. One of them was clutching his arm, which hung limply by his side, and moaning.
The man-at-arms bundled the youths off the barge. He returned his attention to the Dogs. ‘Two of you get your arses over here, if you’re so fucking keen.’
Anxiety flooded Loveday like poison.
Millstone seemed to smell it. ‘Come on,’ he said to Tebbe. ‘Us first.’
But through the anxiety, something else surged in Loveday. Something familiar. A fierce sort of stubbornness. A strange concoction of desperation and pride. And an almost uncontrollable need to see what was inside Calais.
And who.
‘No,’ he said to Millstone, as firmly as he had ever spoken to any of the men. ‘You’ve saved me once today.’
And before the stonemason could answer, Loveday grabbed Tebbe and pulled him towards the ladder, where the impatient man-at-arms was holding his hand out to drag them into place.
The cacophony of the battle on the walls was so loud by now that the man-at-arms had to yank Tebbe and Loveday’s faces inches from his own and scream his instructions to them. Broken arrows and fragments of stone were raining down on them.
‘Get up fast,’ the man-at-arms was yelling. ‘Keep your head out of the way. Strike upwards. Do as much damage as you can. If you can get over, one of you wave like fuck and I’ll send the whole of fucking England up behind you. If you can’t and you feel like you’re fucked, get down so I can send some other cunt up. Remember – watch your fucking heads. Are you going up together?’
The Dogs nodded.
‘We’ll cover you,’ screamed the man-at-arms. He waved frantically to one of his colleagues, directing archers on the bank. Pointed to the Dogs and mimed climbing.
The archers started shooting, aiming either side of the ladder. Tebbe smacked Loveday on the back. He shouted something Loveday couldn’t hear.
They both tucked their weapons under their left arms. Put their right feet on the bottom rung of the ladder. Loveday felt the boat rock underneath him. He had to make a conscious effort not to piss in his trousers.
Then he started climbing.
When Loveday was first a man, a little younger than his twentieth name day, a year or two after he had married Alys, builders had come to the village to repair the crumbling stone tower of the church. It had taken them the whole summer, and on the days when the Captain had let the Dogs idle between jobs, Loveday had liked nothing better than to lie in the meadow beyond the churchyard and watch the men working high on the scaffold they had put up.
He had admired their nonchalance as they climbed and swung from level to level, scampering up and down the wooden struts and crossbars like the fat little auburn squirrels that lived in the woods. Strong and nimble, they could swing and leap around the sides and top of the tall church tower with tools in their hands, buckets of lime or sand slung over their arms, hooking and unhooking pulleys even as they hung in the air with just the strength of one shoulder. These leathery-skinned men, who worked stripped to the waist in all weathers, their bodies marked with inked scratches in the shapes of crude crucifixes and the initials of saints, made it look so easy that Loveday had begun to dream that he too would one day be like them.
Then, on a night near the end of the harvest, when the village was dancing and singing into the long, warm evening, Loveday had been able to resist no longer. He had slipped away from the revellers, wandered through the deserted churchyard and clambered up the scaffold himself.
It had felt like magic to begin with, as he pulled himself slowly from one level to the next. At first, he had been higher than the thatch of the village houses dotted along the rough tracks that led out into the fields beyond. Then higher than the roof of the manor. Then higher than most of the trees.
Loveday had climbed and climbed. He had felt the rough warmth of the stone, slowly releasing the trapped heat of the summer’s day. He had pressed his fingers into the scratches on the tower’s stone, unseen by anyone since the masons who had hewn them generations ago.
He had seen birds below him circle and dive.
And on that evening, he had seen some part of life on Earth that the ordinary human eye could not see. He had chanced upon a space allowed only to a very few. Between the realm of man and God.
He had looked at the sky fading from blue to a midsummer’s bruised mauve and cried out with happiness.
But then he had looked at the ground. At the tiny gravestones, the size of pebbles below him. At the stirring of the summer breeze among the treetops.
At things he had no right to see and no business being above.
He had become paralysed with fear. So scared that he had sobered up. Tightened up. And lost all his confidence.
He had tried to climb down from the church scaffold. Yet his legs had cramped with doubt. His hands shook. His limbs had refused every move he tried to make to climb down.
Darkness fell. It had taken him almost until dawn to lower himself back down to the ground.
Just that feeling now gripped Loveday as he scaled the ladder beside Tebbe. The ladder swayed, but was not as unstable as he had imagined it would be; the barge was roped tightly to the bolts driven into the bankside.
Nor was there any barrage of missiles aimed at them from above.
What scared him, as they clambered upwards together, was the quiet.
Before they were halfway up the ladder, the roar of the men below had quietened and levelled out to little more than a hum.
The clatter of drums and blare of horns and trumpets was like a band playing in the next village.
What filled Loveday’s ears instead was the sound of his own laboured breathing. The thud of his heart. The screech of seabirds over the top of the city. The creak of the wide ladder he was clinging to. And Tebbe’s scratchy cough.
They said nothing to one another. They just climbed.
The higher they got, the more Loveday could smell the burning he had noticed below. It mingled with the salt on the air.
Cannon powder?
They kept climbing.
They passed arrow slits, bracing themselves for the appearance of a nocked arrow.
A couple of dozen yards away to their right, another pair of Englishmen were hacking upwards, trying to land blows on a man-at-arms who swiped at them alternately with a long, sharp halberd.
They looked up with every step, waiting for the tumble of a stone or another stinking animal carcass.
When they were five rungs from the top, they stopped. Loveday pulled his short sword from his armpit, where it was still clamped, and motioned to Tebbe to do likewise.
His blood was screaming in his ears.
Tebbe pulled out the little axe with its blade and spike. He whispered loudly to Loveday. ‘Together?’
The archer had sweat pouring down his forehead. He looked pale and sick. But he had the same intensity in his eyes that Loveday had always seen when they had gone into battle together.
‘Aye,’ said Loveday. He took a deep breath. Wondered if he would ever take another. He had hooked his left arm around the ladder rung nearest his face. ‘Together,’ he said. ‘Like we always have been.’
Tebbe grinned. He coughed once more. Struggled for breath. But then he said Loveday’s war cry for him. ‘Desperta ferr—’
Before he had even finished, Tebbe set off.
Together, thought Loveday.
He heaved with his crooked left arm and pushed with his feet. He drew his short sword back, trying to catch up with Tebbe as he prepared to swing at whoever might be lurking, waiting for them behind the wall-top. But he was not fast enough.
His slowness saved his life.
Loveday was looking straight up as the lip of the cauldron appeared at the edge of the wall, between two crenels.
Placed perfectly to see leather-gloved hands tip it forward.
He was close enough to the edge of the ladder to swing instinctively so that he was hanging off it, his elbow still crooked around its rung but his feet dangling in thin air, with only the moat below.
He was in the perfect position to see the whole cauldron of scalding pitch and sand gush out, straight into Tebbe’s chest.
Thick black sludge with flames licking off it engulfed the archer.
Tebbe’s hair caught fire. His long ponytail flared like a candlewick and disappeared.
The pitch covered his face and seared the flesh. It filled his mouth and destroyed his throat. Melted his lungs before they could even blow out a last breath.
Tebbe never even screamed.
The leather strap of his shoddy helmet burned through and the hat tumbled away, falling silently down to the barge.
Then his hands slipped from the ladder and he too dropped straight downwards. All around him, tiny droplets of fire and searing sand-tar fell like hellish snow.
The smell of the pitch was awful. The stench of Tebbe’s burned hair was worse.
Loveday turned his face away. The heat singed his eyebrows and beard. Some of the pitch caught on his shirt and sleeve and he felt it blister the skin beneath. He ignored the pain. He kicked his legs uselessly in thin air, holding all his bodyweight in his left arm, still clamped tight around the ladder.
He could barely believe what he had just seen. But he knew it was coming for him next.
He tucked his chin into his chest and, for one heartbeat more, just dangled, waiting for the agonising burn of a second pitch bucket to hit him.
It never came.
Loveday felt his arm start to slip. He kept kicking his legs until he managed to wrap one of them back around the ladder. He realised he had to get down again. Get away from the danger on the top of the wall as quickly as he could.
Yet his legs were frozen, clamped immobile to the side of the ladder. Which had started moving sideways.
Below, Loveday now heard frantic yells. He did not dare to look. Could not bear to see what had become of Tebbe.
He could also smell a new sort of burning.
The ladder was on fire.
‘Down! Get down, for Christ’s sake!’ Millstone’s voice floated up to him, clear as a chorister’s.
‘I can’t,’ Loveday shouted, or thought he did. His jaw was clamped shut. ‘I can’t!’
But he could not stay on the burning ladder either. So Loveday closed his eyes tight one last time. Then opened them wide and took the only option he had left.
He forced his mouth to open. Clamped his teeth around his short sword’s blade.
And started climbing up.
Five rungs lay between Loveday’s place on the ladder and the top of the wall. He scrambled up them. His sword blade covered his tongue in rust crumbs. Its rough, chipped edge scraped the corners of his mouth bloody. He didn’t care.
Anger was building inside him. He let it take over. He flew up the rungs. He clamped his hands on the top of the parapet, grabbing on to the crenel and heaving as though he wanted to tear it clean off the wall.
He threw his right leg up, then rolled his belly on to the top of the wall. Landed on the path that ran behind the parapet.
He pulled the rusty sword out of his mouth. Wiped blood across his face with the back of his hand, and gave one last war cry before they cut him down.
All he saw was a lad in leather gloves running away towards a fierce fight going on around the top of another ladder, thirty or more paces away along the wall path.
In the other direction, there was no one between him and a great square tower that jutted out from the wall.
So for a moment he just stood there – his legs trembling and his mouth leaking blood into the bristles on his chin.
He looked down from the parapet into the city of Calais. It was far bigger than it had seemed for all the months they had been outside in Villeneuve. Below him lay a mass of rooftops, some thatched and some tiled and others still flat and populated with wood stores or washing lines. A tight grid of streets cut between the buildings, and here and there, at the heart of what he supposed were parishes, stood small churches. Their bells were tolling in alarm, as though there was a great fire spreading.
The Captain was in there somewhere.
He had to be.
Madly, Loveday thought of finding a way down into the streets alone. Then he recalled what he had been told by the English knight at the bottom of the ladder.
‘Wave like fuck and I’ll send the whole of England after you.’
He turned back and leaned over the point of the wall over which he had launched himself. ‘I’m here!’ he yelled. ‘Get up here!’ He brandished his rusty sword above his head.
A cheer erupted from the spectator stand. Loveday saw women and young men on their feet, roaring in excitement.
But a heartbeat later, a volley of arrows and crossbow bolts fizzed around his ears. He threw himself back down behind the wall, cursing himself. The crowd understood what had happened. The archers below did not. They thought he was a Frenchman.
He knew why. They had not seen him clamber over the wall. They had seen Tebbe fall and the ladder collapse. They assumed he had fallen too.
Loveday shuffled sideways and stole a glance between the crenels to the moat below. It was as he had thought.
The ladder had burned through and broken in half. It was sinking in the moat. The barge was being unmoored and dragged away.
The nearest ladder to him was now twenty paces away towards the tower. If he didn’t get to it, he was trapped.
Loveday took a deep breath. He puffed out the recklessness that had swept over him in the moment he had scaled the parapet. It would not keep him alive now. He dried the sweat off his palms on the gritty surface of the parapet path where he sat. Told himself what he had to do.
Get to the next ladder. Get back over the wall. Get out of here and never come back.
He slapped himself in the face. It hurt. He hauled himself into a crouch and prepared to scamper to where he thought he had seen the next ladder positioned.
Two men-at-arms came out of a door in the tower beyond.
Loveday’s heart skipped. He had been spotted. And the men-at-arms were much closer to the point of the next ladder than he was. They were only lightly armoured. But they carried long swords. And they were heading straight for him.
Loveday looked down. Now there was no doubt about it. He was scared. He did not want to be, but he was. To leap from the parapet into the city was certain death. To go over the other side meant the same, even if he managed to land in the moat. To run from the men-at-arms would only bring him headlong into the melee where the lad who had killed Tebbe had gone.
And the one thing he could never do again was run.
He had to stand his ground.
Loveday felt like he was going to vomit. He swallowed hard. His spit tasted of blood and rust.
Then he put both hands on the hilt of his blunt sword and planted his feet, ready to fight. His knees shook. He cursed them. He tried to override the fear. To anticipate which of the men would strike at him first. He tried to think what their training would tell them to do.
He forced himself to imagine all the knights he had known over the years. To remember how they had fought. He pictured Sir Denis. Sir Adrian.
Sir Arnoul.
The French knight had said something when he and Millstone had found him in the forest. What was it?
Make me your prison.
Then he heard Northampton’s words to him when the earl had clamped his hands on his shoulders that very afternoon.
Virtue, glory, chivalry – all that shit. The tragedy is, a lot of them fucking believe it.
He had an idea. His mind was racing so frantically he could not tell if it was fear or bravery that put it in his head.
Or stupidity.
He did it anyway.
Loveday bent down. He placed his short sword on the ground in front of him. Then he stood with his hands raised, palms facing forward. The men-at-arms stopped, confused, and shouted something in French.
Loveday called back. ‘I surrender! I surrender! Make me your prison!’
His voice sounded ridiculous to him. But he stepped past the sword and walked slowly towards them anyway. ‘Make me your prison,’ he said, trying to sound as reasonable as he could. He realised he was affecting a French accent. He kept saying it.
The men-at-arms shook their heads. The taller of the two hawked and spat. He raised his sword to eye level. He pointed the blade directly at Loveday.
At his heart.
Loveday kept walking. He was five paces away. Then three. Then no more than a sword’s length.
Close enough to see everything.
The dents on the men-at-arms’ breastplates. The bags under their eyes. The whorehouse pox spreading around the short one’s mouth. The scuff on the flat of his sword’s blade where it had been sharpened on a whetstone.
And Thorp’s face, as it appeared above the parapet.
The crossbow in his hand.
Thorp put one hand on the parapet to steady himself and tucked the crossbow butt under his chin so he could shoot it with the other. He shook his head at Loveday like an exasperated schoolmaster.
The man-at-arms nearest him looked down in surprise.
Thorp shot him in the thigh.
The man howled and Thorp ducked back down. In his place, Millstone appeared, and vaulted over the wall. The man who had been shot was rolling on the path, writhing in agony. The other was rooted to the spot in shock, still pointing his sword at Loveday’s chest. In one pace, Millstone was behind him. He grabbed him in a chokehold, left elbow fastened around his neck.
Realising what was happening, the man-at-arms thrashed and bucked and kicked. Millstone tightened his grip. The man’s face turned purple. He opened his mouth. His tongue began to swell up.
Millstone kept holding as he curled his right arm around the man’s forehead. The man’s eyes bulged. They flashed from side to side in terror, like a horse in a storm.
The man was still trying to kick. He tried to grab behind him with his hands. Millstone kneed him in the back of the thighs to stop him struggling and tightened his left arm again. The man tried to say something. A squeak was all he could muster before he passed out.
His body went limp. Millstone inhaled sharply. Then he jerked his arms hard away from one another and the man’s neck snapped like a chicken bone.
Thorp reappeared and he now climbed over the wall too. The man he had shot was trying to crawl away, dragging his wounded leg along and leaving a smear of blood behind him like a snail. Thorp followed him and kicked him in the guts, rolling him on to his back.
‘Thorp,’ said Loveday. His voice quailed. He wondered, absurdly, where Thorp had found the crossbow. ‘No. We can leave him.’
Thorp glanced at Loveday like he did not know who he was. He reloaded the crossbow and stood over the man-at-arms. The man was whimpering. Tears were rolling out of his eyes and down his temples. He looked in terror at the jerking body of his companion.
Thorp put a foot on his chest. A bead of sweat dripped off the end of his nose.
The man-at-arms started shaking his head. He copied Loveday. ‘Make me your prison,’ he said.
Thorp shook his head. He had the crossbow in two hands now. The butt tight against his shoulder. He held it steady.
‘We don’t take prisoners any more,’ Thorp said.
He shot the man in the face.
Suddenly Loveday found he was crying too. His whole body shook. He sank to his knees so that he did not fall from the walkway’s edge. He put his hands on the ground and wept. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, though he did not know who to.
Thorp picked him up roughly by his collar. ‘We need to go,’ he said. ‘Now.’
Millstone was dusting his hands, as though he had just finished changing a cart-wheel. He used a thumb to massage the muscles in his left arm. Further down the wall defenders were breaking away from the melee and running towards them. ‘Thorp’s right,’ Millstone said.
They scrambled on to the ladder, Loveday first, followed by Millstone and Thorp. Now the archers below had worked out who they were, thick covering volleys of longbow shot flew over them at the parapet, stopping their pursuers in their tracks.
They stepped on to the barge and then on to the bank. Loveday turned to Millstone. ‘Tebbe,’ he said. ‘I . . . ’
He was still crying. Millstone just patted him on the shoulder as though he were an elderly man, or a fool.
A familiar hand clapped Loveday on the shoulder.
‘Well,’ said Northampton. ‘I definitely can’t send you back to the ditch now.’
The earl had brought a herald with him. The young man had a round, hairless face, with several rolls of fat beneath his chin. His tabard was clean. Its colours were impossibly bright.
He loitered beside Northampton and the Dogs. Northampton glared.
‘Christ thrice buggered and put back to bed, get on with it,’ said Northampton to the herald. ‘I’m supposed to be in charge of a fucking battle.’
‘Dogs of Essex,’ said the herald, ‘Her Grace the Queen salutes and commends your bravery, and sends you this token of her admiration. To . . . you, ah, all.’
He held out a small strip of ribbon. It looked like a woman’s garter.
Loveday tried to speak. He retched. He spat a pool of yellow liquid at the herald’s feet. He started crying again and put his hands on his knees.
The herald was still proffering the little ribbon.
‘Fuck me,’ said Northampton. He snatched the garter. ‘Fucking women,’ he said. ‘What kind of soft cunt wants a garter in a war?’ He grabbed the back of Loveday’s filthy shirt and hauled him upright. ‘Where have your mates gone?’
Loveday wiped his mouth and looked numbly around. Thorp and Millstone were searching the moat.
‘Looking for . . . ’ Loveday couldn’t say Tebbe’s name. ‘Will the queen send us home?’
‘I highly fucking doubt it,’ said Northampton. From the far side of the battle at the walls, a huge cannon boom sounded, followed by screams of agony.
‘That’s a fucking cannon blown,’ the earl said. He passed Loveday the garter. ‘Well, God alone knows how, but you’ve impressed the queen,’ he said. ‘You never know, you might end up with my job.’
Then he strode off back to his platform.