1356

‘We are grateful to him,’ King Jean said.

‘You’d be more grateful if you led us south, sire,’ Douglas said, ‘south to kill that puppy Edward of Wales.’

The king blinked. Douglas, who alone among the Scotsmen had not gone down on one knee, was publicly reprimanding him, but the king smiled to show no offence had been taken. ‘We shall go south when this business is settled,’ the king said. He had a thin voice with a tone of petulance.

‘I’m glad of it, sire,’ the Lord of Douglas said fiercely.

‘Unless other business intrudes,’ the king qualified his first remark. He raised a hand in a gesture of vague benediction and rode on. The rain became more insistent.

‘Unless other business intrudes,’ the Lord of Douglas said savagely. ‘He’s got Englishmen harrowing his lands, and he thinks other business might intrude?’ He spat, then turned as a cheer from the waiting men-at-arms announced that the tower was at last being pushed towards the high walls. Trumpets blared. A great banner showing Saint Denis had been unfurled from the tower’s top. The flag displayed the martyred Denis holding his own severed head.

The great siege tower lurched as it was shoved forward, and Robbie needed to hold on to one of the stanchions that held the drawbridge in place. The long poles had been pushed clean through the tower’s base so they protruded on either side and scores of men were thrusting on them, encouraged by men with whips and by drummers who beat a steady rhythm on nakers, great goatskin tubs that boomed like cannon.

‘We should have had cannon,’ the Lord of Douglas grumbled.

‘Too expensive.’ Geoffrey de Charny, one of King Jean’s greatest warlords, had come to stand beside the Scottish lord. ‘Cannons cost money, my friend, and gunpowder costs money, and France has no money.’

‘It’s richer than Scotland.’

‘The taxes are not collected,’ Geoffrey said bleakly. ‘Who will pay these men?’ He gestured at the waiting soldiers.

‘Send them to collect the taxes.’

‘They would keep the taxes.’ Geoffrey made the sign of the cross. ‘Pray there is a pot of gold inside Breteuil.’

‘There’s nothing but a pack of bloody Navarese inside Breteuil. We should be marching south!’

‘I agree.’

‘Then why don’t we?’

‘Because the king has not ordered it.’ Geoffrey watched the tower. ‘But he will,’ he added softly.

‘He will?’

‘I think he will,’ Geoffrey said. ‘The Pope is pushing him to war, and he knows he can’t let the damned English run riot over half France again. So yes, he will.’

Douglas wished de Charny sounded more certain, but he said nothing more and followed the Frenchman to watch the tower sway and lurch across the turf. The crossbowmen advanced, keeping pace with the tower, and after fifty yards the first bolts came from the castle walls and the crossbowmen ran forward and shot back. Their job was simple: to keep the defenders crouched behind their battlements as the gaunt tower trundled on. The bolts hissed up, clattered on stone and shook the great banners hanging from the crenellations; bolt after bolt flew as the crossbowmen shot, then they ducked behind their pavises and turned the big handles that winched back the strings. The defenders shot back, their bolts thumping into the turf or banging into the pavises, and soon the first bolts hammered into the tower itself.

Robbie heard them. He saw the drawbridge shudder with the strikes, but the bridge, which was now hinged upright to form a wall at the front of the top platform, was made of thick oak covered with hides, and none of the Navarrese bolts penetrated the leather and timber. They just struck home, a constant banging, and beneath him the tower swayed and creaked and juddered forward. It was just possible to peer past the right-hand edge of the drawbridge, and he saw the castle was two hundred paces away. Great banners hung down the wall’s front, many of them pierced by crossbow bolts. The defenders’ bolts slammed into the tower, making its leading wall a pincushion of leather-fledged missiles. The drums were banging, and trumpets were calling and the tower rolled another few yards, sometimes dipping as the turf dropped, and a few crossbow bolts, shot from the walls to either side, slashed into the labouring peasants. More were brought up to replace the wounded or dead, and the men-at-arms shouted at them, whipped them, and they heaved on the poles and the great tower trundled on, going faster now, so fast that Robbie drew his sword and looked up at one of the twisted ropes that held the drawbridge in place. There were two hemp ropes, one on either side, and when the tower was close enough they had to be cut to send the great bridge crashing down onto the battlements. Not long now, he thought, and he kissed the hilt of his sword where the relic of Saint Andrew was hidden.

‘Your uncle,’ Roland de Verrec said, ‘is angry with you.’ The Frenchman looked absolutely calm as the tower thundered slowly forward and as the defenders’ bolts thumped harder into the drawbridge.

‘He’s always angry,’ Robbie said. He was nervous of Roland de Verrec. The young Frenchman was too composed, too certain of his own certainty and Robbie felt inadequate. He was certain of nothing.

‘I told him you could not break your oath,’ Roland said. ‘It was not forced on you?’

‘No.’

‘What was in your heart as you made it?’ the Frenchman asked.

Robbie thought. ‘Gratitude,’ he said after a while.

‘Gratitude?’

‘A friend tended me through the pestilence. I should have died, but didn’t. He saved my life.’

‘God saved your life,’ Roland corrected him, ‘and he saved it for a special purpose. I envy you. You have been chosen.’

‘Chosen?’ Robbie asked, clinging to the stanchion as the tower rocked.

‘You were sick with the pestilence, yet you survived. God needs you for a reason. I salute you.’ Roland de Verrec lifted his drawn sword in salute. ‘I envy you,’ he said again.

‘Envy me?’ Robbie asked, surprised.

‘I search for a cause,’ Roland said.

And then the tower stopped.

It stopped dead with such a lurch that the men on board were thrown to one side. One wheel had dropped into a hole, a hole big enough to trap the vehicle, and no amount of shoving would drive the wheel up and out, instead the heaves only skewed the tower further to the left. ‘Stop,’ a man shouted, ‘stop!’

The defenders jeered. Crossbow bolts drove through the thin rain to slash into the peasants who had been pushing the tower. Blood coloured the turf and men screamed as the thick quarrels bored into flesh and shattered bones.

Geoffrey de Charny ran forward. He wore a mail coat and helmet, but carried no shield. ‘The levers,’ he shouted, ‘the levers!’ He had hoped this would not happen, but the French were ready for it, and a group of men equipped with stout oak poles ran to the trapped side of the tower where they placed anvil-like blocks of timber that would be used as fulcrums so that the levers could lift the left-hand side of the tower and allow it to be shoved on. Other men brought buckets of stones to fill the hole so that the rearward wheel could roll over it.

The crossbow bolts poured down from the walls. Two, three men were down, then Geoffrey bellowed at the nearest pavise holders to bring their shields to protect the men hauling on the levers, and it all took time, and the defenders, emboldened by the stalled tower, rained down more bolts. Some Navarrese defenders were hit by the French crossbow bolts, but only a few, as the garrison ducked behind their stone merlons to rewind their bows. Geoffrey de Charny seemed to have a charmed life because he was not protected by any shield and though the bolts seared close to him none struck as he organised the men who would thrust down on the great oak levers to free the tower. ‘Now!’ he called, and men tried to lift the monstrous tower with the long oak poles.

And the first fire arrow streaked from the castle.

It was a crossbow bolt, wrapped with kindling that was protected by a leather skirt, and the kindling was soaked in pitch that left a black wavering trail of smoke as the bolt streaked from the rampart and thumped into the lower part of the tower. The flame flickered briefly, then went out, but a dozen more fire arrows followed.

‘Water! Water!’ Roland de Verrec called. There were already some leather pails of water on the top platform, and the lurching tower had spilt much of it, but Roland’s men tipped what was left over the top of the drawbridge so that it cascaded down the tower’s front face to soak the already wet hides. More and more fire arrows were thumping home so that the front of the tower smoked in a score of places, but the smoke came only from burning arrows. So far the dampened hides were protecting the tower.

‘Heave!’ Geoffrey de Charny shouted, and the men on the levers hauled down, and the levers bent, and the tower creaked, then one of the levers snapped, sending a half-dozen men sprawling. ‘Bring another pole!’

It took five minutes for another pole to be fetched, then the men hauled down again and the peasants were told to shove forward at the same time, and some men-at-arms ran to help the peasants. Crossbow bolts came thick. More fire arrows were shot, this time at the right-hand side of the tower, and one struck under the edge of a hide and lodged in the oak sheathing. No one saw it. It burned there, the flames creeping up into the space between the hides and the planks, hidden by the leather, and though smoke seeped from beneath the stiff leather sheets, there was so much other smoke that it went undetected.

Then the Navarrese crossbowmen changed their tactics. Some kept shooting the fire arrows, and some, from the slits in the walls, aimed at the men clustered by the left side of the tower, while the rest aimed their crossbows high in the air so that the bolts screamed into the sky, hung there an instant, then plummeted down onto the tower’s open platform. Most of the bolts missed. Some struck the men waiting to heave on the poles, but a few crashed down onto the platform, and Roland, fearing that his men would be killed, ordered them to hold up their shields, but then they could not pour the water that had started to arrive in leather pails. The tower was jerking now as some men levered at the side and others shoved at the back. There was a smell of burning.

‘Pull it back!’ the Lord of Douglas advised Geoffrey de Charny. A crossbow bolt slammed down to bury itself in the turf at the Scotsman’s feet and he kicked it irritably. The drums were beating still, the trumpets were tangling their notes, the defenders were shouting at the French, who heaved again at the levers and shoved again at the tower that would not move, and it was now that the Navarrese defenders unveiled their last weapon.

It was a springald, an oversized crossbow, which had been mounted on the wall and was drawn back by four men cranking on metal handles. It shot a quarrel fully three feet long and as thick about as a man’s wrist, and the garrison had chosen to keep it hidden until the tower was just a hundred paces away, but the French disarray persuaded them to use it now. They pulled away the great timber screen that had sheltered the weapon and released its metal arrow.

The quarrel hammered into the face of the tower, rocking it back, and such was the force in the steel-reinforced bow yard, which was fully ten feet across, that the great iron head pierced leather and wood to stick halfway through the tower’s front. It sprayed sparks and buckled one of the hides, revealing the planks beneath, and three fire arrows thumped home into the bare wood as the springald was laboriously rewound.

‘Pull the damn thing back!’ the Lord of Douglas snarled. Maybe the tower could be backed out of the hole instead of being pushed through it, then the dip could be filled and the great contraption started forward again.

‘Ropes!’ Geoffrey de Charny shouted. ‘Fetch ropes!’