[The English] kept such a close guard upon the harbour and port of Calais that nothing could sail in or out without being battered and wrecked. This was a greater blow to the city’s resistance than anything else had been.
True Chronicles of Jean le Bel
The flurry of activity Romford had seen on the Risbank included the building of a huge wooden fortress, its defences made from thick tree trunks hewn in the forests of Boulogne. One late spring morning, Loveday, Millstone and Thorp sat among them. The pillars still gave off a light aroma of sap and bark. It almost masked the sour smell of the men camped inside the perimeter. The three Dogs were loitering in their tent, waiting for the Earl of Northampton to arrive.
‘Another day of watching the fucking sea and pulling catapults around,’ moaned Thorp. ‘Why do we bother?’
‘We bother,’ said Millstone, ‘because the alternative is going back to the ditch.’
On the other side of the fort, cannons boomed. Despite himself, Loveday jumped. Thorp narrowed his eyes. ‘You still not used to it?’
‘I suppose not,’ said Loveday, although they all knew the truth. Since the battle on the walls of Calais, they had all changed. Millstone had become harder and more closed off than ever. Thorp swung between silence and ill temper; Loveday knew he was nursing the loss of Tebbe, though Thorp could barely bring himself to mention his friend’s name.
Loveday himself had grown jumpy and anxious. The burns down the side of his arm and body from the pitch that had killed Tebbe had healed well, the yellow pus-blisters receding and scabs falling off to leave dull purple spots. But his hands trembled all the time. He spilled his ale and missed his mouth with his food. And he had lost almost all his physical strength. When the Dogs were pressed into dragging fort timbers along the Risbank, he was barely able even to lift a log. At night, he woke up sweating so much it was as if he had been hauled up from the seabed. His thoughts rotated constantly between a cast of the lost and dead. Pismire, Father, Tebbe. Scotsman, Romford. And of course, the Captain.
His decline had changed things among them. Now that the Dogs were only three, there was little need for any of them to act as leader. Even so, Loveday had ceased to fill the position. Millstone now took decisions that concerned them all. Thorp acted as his deputy. They treated Loveday with respect and they shared everything among themselves, as they had always done. But it was clear that they saw him as he was starting to see himself. As an invalid. A casualty of war.
The fort the English were building on the Risbank was huge. In design, it reminded Loveday of camps he had known in the wild borderlands of Scotland during the wars with the Bruce. The tree trunks of its wall were shorn of their bark and planed smooth, then driven deep into the soft, damp ground. Every twenty paces along the walls rose three-storey guard towers. On the side facing the mainland, a gatehouse three times the size of a regular guard tower was patrolled by men-at-arms. On the other side, a smaller gatehouse led out to a platform at the tip of the Risbank, where cannons and catapults faced out to sea.
Inside the fort lived several hundred men. Many were new to the siege. Since Easter, ships of all sizes had been arriving almost every day, bringing fresh troops recruited all over England and Wales. Loveday thought they were different to the men of the army the Dogs had come over with the previous summer. They were harder, rougher, surlier and coarser. Millstone said he had heard they were being recruited in a new fashion. Their pay would not be made in coin but in pardons for all crimes they had committed against the king’s peace.
‘Bunch of murderers and rapists come over to escape their past,’ said Thorp, when they spoke of these new arrivals.
‘Same as it ever was,’ Millstone replied. ‘Now it’s just being said out loud.’
When the three Dogs were eventually briefed on their day’s duty, it was not Northampton who came to speak to them but Sir Hugh Hastings. The Norfolk knight looked terrible: his eyes were bloodshot and sweat stood out on his forehead, though the spring morning was still unseasonably chilly. His wig was tangled and unkempt and he could not speak more than a dozen words without coughing, often very violently.
He had kept the Dogs waiting – out of spite, thought Loveday. Hastings had still not forgiven them for what happened to his brothel in Villeneuve. For Romford and Scotsman’s escape. For Hircent’s murder.
‘There you are,’ he said, as he shuffled over. ‘Been looking for you.’
‘This is where we always are,’ said Millstone.
Hastings coughed. He did not bother to cover his mouth. ‘Expecting Constable Willikin, were you? Your saviour from Northamptonshire. If I had my way you’d still be in the ditch.’
Loveday felt Thorp bridle with anger. ‘We’re here because the queen—’ Thorp began.
Hastings fixed him with his pink watery eyes. ‘What do any of you know about the queen?’ he asked.
Millstone placed a firm hand on Thorp’s arm. ‘The queen requested we be posted here. That’s all we know. That’s all anyone knows.’
‘The queen has another little princeling in her belly. Did you know that?’ said Hastings. ‘We all know what that does to a woman’s brain.’
Millstone nodded calmly. ‘It’s a blessing.’
‘For you. For now.’ Hastings coughed again. He spat. ‘Well. I can’t waste the day. You’re out on the boats today.’
‘The blockade ships?’ said Millstone. ‘With respect, Sir Hugh—’
‘We’re not sailors.’ Hastings used a sing-song, childish voice. ‘I know that. And I wouldn’t risk sinking another ship in the harbour by putting you three on one. I said boats. Our lookouts here and on the mainland have spotted enemy spies trying to leave Calais. Pretending to be refugees. They starve themselves a little, stop eating the horsemeat or whatever they’re down to in that godforsaken place. So they look the part. But they’re not. Your job is to intercept them. See that they get a nice long drink of the saltwater. Think you can manage that?’
The Dogs looked at one another uncertainly. ‘Spies?’ said Loveday.
‘Oh, the fat man speaks,’ said Hastings. ‘Spies, yes. And try not to capsize the boat while you’re at work. You don’t want to lose your pretty garter.’
Loveday let this pass, though Hastings’ barb about the garter stung. He had the token from the queen tied around his wrist.
Millstone finished the conversation before it could take any more unpleasant turn. ‘As you wish, Sir Hugh. Where will we report for this duty?’
Hastings pointed to the fort gatehouse at the tip of the Risbank. ‘There. One of my Norfolk men is organising the boats.’ He coughed so hard that his shoulders shook. ‘A man who can actually get something done,’ he said, once he could speak again.
‘You can’t miss him.’
They brought their weapons down to the gate at the Risbank’s tip: Millstone his hammer, Loveday his short sword and Thorp the crossbow he had picked up during the battle on the walls. He now preferred it to the longbow he had used all his life. ‘Better for close encounters,’ he said.
Outside the fort’s gate, the Risbank was a flurry of activity. Catapults and cannon platforms were manned by fresh troops, who strode around with an energy that told the Dogs none of them had suffered a cruel winter in Villeneuve.
Loveday cast his eye around for anyone who looked like he might be Hastings’ man. He spotted a figure in the shingle at the Risbank’s edge, bent down beside a line of small, oared boats. ‘That must be him,’ he said.
Millstone nodded. They made their way between the stone-throwers and guns to the boats.
As they arrived, the figure stood up. And when he turned around, Loveday’s blood ran cold. He looked older than Loveday remembered. He had fresh scars on his face, and his beard and hair were much longer than they had been. But there was no mistaking who it was.
Beneath the shaggy mop of hair, the Dogs could see that both his ears had been removed.
The man squinted at them. Then grinned. The few teeth he had left were brown and black.
‘Essex Dogs,’ said the no-eared East Anglian. ‘There aren’t many of you left now, are there?’
Loveday opened his mouth to answer. He could only croak.
The no-eared man had been one of the East Anglian crew the Dogs had clashed with on the march to Crécy.
They had almost come to blows on the beach when the whole army landed. Again when they had been sent to burn ships at Barfleur.
Then, during the sack of Saint-Lô, Father, Romford and Millstone had fought with their captain, a vile, scrawny man called Shaw.
Millstone levelled his steady gaze on the no-eared man. ‘I see you have even fewer of your crew.’
The no-eared man narrowed his eyes nastily. Millstone had smashed Shaw’s head to pieces with his hammer and burned his body inside an apothecary shop. The no-eared man had been there to see it. ‘Some gone. Some dead,’ he said. ‘But I’m here. And I will be longer than any of you Essex pricks.’
Millstone nodded. ‘We never learned your name.’
‘Faine,’ said the no-eared man. ‘Feel better for knowing?’
‘Not really,’ said Millstone. ‘But I shall if you show us which boat is ours, and cause us no more trouble.’ He twirled his hammer.
Faine regarded Millstone with mild amusement. ‘You touch me, and Hastings will have you strung up from one of those trebuchets,’ he said.
‘Maybe so,’ said Millstone. ‘But you won’t be there to watch it.’
Faine grunted. He pointed to the shabbiest boat in the row.
‘What’s that?’ snapped Thorp.
‘What you get for being pricks,’ said Faine. ‘It’s watertight, unfortunately. Don’t fucking whine.’
The Dogs went over to the dilapidated little boat. Faine did nothing to help them. He just smirked as they dragged it down to the water.
‘Enjoy your day’s fishing,’ he called, as Millstone pulled the oars and they moved off. ‘I’ll be watching, and I’ll let Sir Hugh know exactly how you get along.’
Loveday could see none but English patrol boats on the harbour water. Calais’ two sea-facing gates were closed and their drawbridges raised. For more than an hour the Dogs rowed aimlessly around in front of the Risbank, taking turns to pull the oars. They were joined by other crews as Faine sent out more men to join them. But there was nothing to see and no one to intercept.
For a while, Loveday felt anxious. But after a time, he and the other two Dogs relaxed a little. ‘Can’t conjure up spies who aren’t here,’ said Thorp. It was also the first spring day that had felt genuinely warm. The sun came out and they all stripped down to their shirts, and then their bare skin. They enjoyed the sensation of the sun burning them after so long in the dark and cold. Loveday stared down into the harbour water, watching how it changed its depth. Sometimes he could see sand and rock at the bottom, with weed swaying lazily in the current. From time to time, a shoal of brown or silver fish would glide beneath the boat. He trailed his hand in the water and thought of Romford and Scotsman.
Thorp was watching him ‘What’s on your mind?’ asked the archer.
‘I was wondering about the others,’ Loveday said. ‘Where they are now.’
Thorp tightened and looked off into the distance. Loveday realised he thought he meant Tebbe. Thorp had still not spoken a word about what had happened on the ladder.
‘Not . . . them,’ said Loveday, then cringed inwardly. Now he had added thoughts of Pismire and Father to the conversation.
Millstone came to his rescue. ‘He means Scotsman and the lad.’
Thorp nodded, and still said nothing.
Loveday filled the silence, but he found himself gabbling as usual. ‘I was just . . . just wondering how long it took them to get back. Home, I mean. Or where they went. If they stuck together. Whether we’ll ever . . . ’
Thorp seemed to understand what he meant. He considered it.
‘The lad, I doubt it,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t know our places. Where the work is. As for . . . ’ Strangely, Thorp used Scotsman’s given name. It made the hairs on Loveday’s back stand up. As though they were speaking of a dead man.
‘That fucker,’ continued Thorp, ‘if he’s alive, we’ll see him alright. You can hardly miss the bastard.’ He pooled his hands in the cool water of the harbour and splashed it on his face and hair.
‘Bollocks,’ said Millstone.
Thorp looked at him sharply. ‘What’s that? You think you’d mistake that ginger fucking lunk for—’
‘Not him,’ said Millstone. He rested one oar on his lap and pointed to the far side of the harbour, near where Calais’ castle marked the north-west corner of the city’s defences.
Loveday and Thorp sat up and shaded their eyes against the sun’s glare. It took them a moment to see what Millstone meant. When they did, their hearts sank.
Six or seven fishing boats had appeared from the city and were heading towards them. Even from far away, the Dogs could see they were all overloaded with people. In each of the boats someone was waving a flag, although from the distance they were at, Loveday could not make out what was displayed on it.
‘Christ’s ribs, what are they doing?’ said Thorp. ‘Fuckers must see that we’re out here waiting for them. Worst spies since God made Adam.’
Millstone pulled the oars hard so the boat turned towards the little fleet. ‘They’re not spies,’ he said. ‘They’re just hungry. How long’s it been since Easter?’
Thorp and Loveday looked at each other. They had stopped counting days a long time ago. ‘Weeks at least,’ said Loveday. ‘A month, perhaps.’
‘Food must be nearly gone, then,’ said Millstone. He was breathing heavily as he spoke, and sweat was beading in the thick curled hairs of his chest. Loveday wondered why he was suddenly rowing so intensely.
Then he looked behind them and realised that every other English boat in the harbour was doing the same.
Thorp was slower to catch on. ‘What’s the hurry?’ he asked.
‘We need to talk to them,’ Millstone panted. ‘Tell them . . . Before . . . ’
Thorp understood. Loveday understood. Millstone wanted to warn the people on the boats what was happening. In case they couldn’t see for themselves.
The English were closing in for a kill.
It was hopeless.
Though Millstone rowed hard and fast, many of the other men in the boats were fresh recruits: their muscles not wasted by the winter and their appetite for blood stronger than their instinct for mercy. The Dogs were overtaken by three other English craft, with more closing hard behind them.
What was more, the fishing boats coming out of Calais could make no distinction between the dozen English patrol vessels packed with jeering murderers and rapists and the one rowed by a semi-naked, sunburned Millstone, in which Thorp and Loveday stood shouting and flapping their arms.
First, the refugees tried to row away from the English. Then they tried to plead. They waved their flags, made from scaffold poles mounted with rough sheets, blankets or just sackcloth and daubed with the sign of the Cross.
They chanted hymns and prayers. Some held thin hands skyward. Others rolled their eyes and clasped their hands towards the English, even as they tried to escape them.
Loveday watched in horror.
Most of the men and women aboard were old. But even those who were young looked as though they had lived a thousand years. Their ragged clothes hung loose from their shoulders. Their eye sockets were dark and sunken. Their cheekbones pressed against sallow skin as though their skulls were trying to escape from their faces.
‘Shit,’ said Thorp. ‘Do we look that fucking rough?’
But before Millstone or Loveday could answer, the first crossbow bolt thudded into the side of one of the fishing boats.
Loveday looked to see where it had come from. The English boats had now formed a line across the harbour, daring the French to come any further. A barrel-chested Englishman with a bald head roasted pink by sun was pumping a crossbow gleefully in the air.
For a moment, there were no more shots. The two lines of boats floated opposite one another – the English shouting taunts and the starving refugees calling out prayers and pleas.
Then the first of the fishing boats tried to make a break.
Although the fishing boats were larger than the English patrol craft, they were heavier and slower, and they were rowed by thin, drained, elderly and weak people. The English swarmed at them, coming up alongside and lashing out with clubs and sticks at the frightened people who were closest to the sides of the boats.
Some of the English boats were trying to drive the French back towards the harbour and prevent them from getting towards the open sea. But others were actively trying to sink them. Aboard one of the English craft, a lad Loveday reckoned to be about Romford’s age, wearing a mail vest much too large for him, was thrusting a spear at the side of one of the fishing boats, trying to punch a hole in its hull. His mates beside him cheered him on, as though he were doing nothing more than baiting a bull at a fair.
On the bows of another of the French boats, an elderly man was ranting and waving his fist at his tormentors. An English boat manoeuvred alongside. One of the sailors aboard picked up a spare oar and hit the man on the side of the head with it. He collapsed, bleeding. A woman holding a child no more than two summers old was crying hysterically.
Loveday shuddered. The man holding the oar seemed to feel that he was being watched. He turned and stared directly at Loveday.
He leered. He mouthed: ‘Spies.’
It was Faine.
As the fishing boats were chased down, the harbour filled with terrified screams.
‘No more,’ said Millstone. He turned the Dogs’ boat and started rowing towards the Risbank. Thorp and Loveday sat blankly in the stern, not knowing where to look.
One of the fishing boats was sinking. People were leaping overboard.
In front of them, on the far side of the Risbank, smoke was rising after another volley of gunfire and trebuchet shot rained on to the open sea.
Thorp stared at his feet. ‘Even if they get out of the harbour . . . ’ he said. He didn’t finish his sentence.
As they neared the shingle of the Risbank’s beach once more, Loveday spotted a splashing in the water in the middle of the harbour, a long way from where the boats were circling. At first he thought it was a seal, but after a few moments he realised it was two or three people swimming.
He pointed it out to Millstone and Thorp. ‘Should we go and help?’
The two Dogs said nothing and would not meet Loveday’s gaze. He felt his eyes sting. Then their boat hit sand and they clambered over the edge and hauled it up the beach. After that, the Dogs stood, dejected, wondering what to do next.
As if to answer the question, Sir Hugh Hastings walked down the beach towards them, coughing as he came.
‘Back early?’ he spat. He looked out across the harbour, then nodded with cruel satisfaction.
‘A job so well done that not even you could ruin it,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’ll put you on this task every day from now on.’
Millstone stepped up to the knight, moving so close that their chests they were no more than a handspan apart.
‘You send us back out there,’ he said to Hastings, ‘and by my faith I’ll put you in the ground. And they can hang me from whatever tree they like.’
His eyes bored hard into Hastings. ‘I think you know I’m serious.’
For the briefest instant, a look flitted across Hastings’ face that Loveday had never seen him wear before.
Fear.
But Hastings recovered himself quickly. He took half a step back and stifled a cough. ‘You touch me,’ he croaked, ‘or ever speak to me like that again, you’ll wish they’d hanged you.’
He put the flat of his palm on Millstone’s chest.
Millstone yielded and stepped back. But he never let his eyes leave the knight’s. And eventually it was Hastings who turned on his heel and staggered back towards the entrance to the fort.
Loveday’s lungs felt tight. He realised he had been holding his breath.
He exhaled hard and put his hands to his waist. But he could not think of anything to say, and neither Thorp nor Millstone looked as if they wanted to speak of what they had just seen.
So the three Dogs made their way back to the fort too, trying not to hear the last of the howls that echoed across the harbour whenever there was a lull in cannon fire from the other side.
For the rest of the afternoon and long into the evening, Loveday found his thoughts kept returning to the people he had seen swimming in the harbour.
Were they trying to get to the Risbank? Into the open sea? Did they really think they could swim to another city?
The thought plagued Loveday. So did another.
What was happening inside Calais, if throwing yourself from a fishing boat into the cold, deadly sea seemed better than staying put?