Three Great English Victories: A 3-book Collection of Harlequin, 1356 and Azincourt

Because someone was fighting back.

Thomas had heard the screams and, like the other four men in the church, he had gone to the door to see what they meant, but no sooner had they reached the porch than a band of armed men, their mail and helmets dark grey in the dawn, appeared in the graveyard.

Edward slammed the church door, dropped the bar into its brackets, then crossed himself. ‘Sweet Jesus,’ he said in astonishment, then flinched as an axe thumped into the door. ‘Give me that!’ He seized the sword from Thomas.

Thomas let him take it. The church door was shaking now as two or three axes attacked the old wood. The villagers had always reckoned that Hookton was much too small to be raided, but the church door was splintering in front of Thomas’s eyes, and he knew it must be the French. Tales were told up and down the coast of such landings, and prayers were said to keep folk from the raids, but the enemy was here and the church echoed with the crash of their axe blows.

Thomas was in panic, but did not know it. He just knew he had to escape from the church and so he ran and jumped onto the altar. He crushed the silver chalice with his right foot and kicked it off the altar as he climbed onto the sill of the great east window where he beat at the yellow panes, shattering the horn down into the churchyard. He saw men in red and green jackets running past the alehouse, but none looked his way as he jumped down into the churchyard and ran to the ditch where he ripped his clothes as he wriggled through the thorn hedge on the other side. He crossed the lane, jumped the fence of his father’s garden, and hammered on the kitchen door, but no one responded and a crossbow bolt smacked into the lintel just inches from his face. Thomas ducked and ran through the bean plants to the cattle shed where his father stabled a horse. There was no time to rescue the beast, so instead Thomas climbed into the hay loft where he hid his bow and arrows. A woman screamed close by. Dogs were howling. The French were shouting as they kicked down doors. Thomas seized his bow and arrow bag, ripped the thatch away from the rafters, squeezed through the gap and dropped into the neighbour’s orchard.

He ran then as though the devil was on his heels. A crossbow bolt thumped into the turf as he came to Lipp Hill and two of the Genoese archers started to follow him, but Thomas was young and tall and strong and fast. He ran uphill through a pasture bright with cowslips and daisies, leaped a hurdle that blocked a gap in a hedge, then twisted right towards the hill’s crest. He went as far as the wood on the hill’s far side and there he dropped to catch his breath amidst a slope drifted with a haze of bluebells. He lay there, listening to the lambs in a nearby field. He waited, hearing nothing untoward. The crossbowmen had abandoned their pursuit.

Thomas lay in the bluebells for a long time, but at last he crept cautiously back to the hilltop from where he could see a straggle of old women and children scattering on the further hill. Those folk had somehow evaded the crossbowmen and would doubtless flee north to warn Sir Giles Marriott, but Thomas did not join them. Instead he worked his way down to a hazel copse where dog’s mercury bloomed and from where he could see his village dying.

Men were carrying plunder to the four strange boats that were grounded on the Hook’s shingle. The first thatch was being fired. Two dogs lay dead in the street beside a woman, quite naked, who was being held down while Frenchmen hitched up their mail shirts to take their turns with her. Thomas remembered how, not long ago, she had married a fisherman whose first wife had died in childbirth. She had been so coy and happy, but now, when she tried to crawl off the road, a Frenchman kicked her in the head, then bent with laughter. Thomas saw Jane, the girl he feared he had made pregnant, being dragged towards the boats and was ashamed that he felt a sense of relief that he would not have to confront his father with her news. More cottages were fired as Frenchmen hurled burning straw onto their thatch, and Thomas watched the smoke curl and thicken, then worked his way through the hazel saplings to a place where hawthorn blossom was thick, white and concealing. It was there he strung his bow.

It was the best bow he had ever made. It had been cut from a stave that had washed ashore from a ship that had foundered in the Channel. A dozen staves had come to Hookton’s shingle on the south wind and Sir Giles Marriott’s huntsman reckoned they must have been Italian yew, for it was the most beautiful wood he had ever seen. Thomas had sold eleven of the tight-grained staves in Dorchester, but kept the best one. He’d carved it, steamed the ends to give them a slight bend against the wood’s grain, then painted the bow with a mix of soot and flax-seed oil. He had boiled the mix in his mother’s kitchen on days when his father was away, and Thomas’s father had never known what he was doing, though sometimes he would complain of the smell and Thomas’s mother would say she had been making a potion to poison the rats. The bow had had to be painted to stop it from drying out, for then the wood would become brittle and shatter under the stress of the taut string. The paint had dried a deep golden colour, just like the bows Thomas’s grandfather used to make in the Weald, but Thomas had wanted it to be darker and so he had rubbed more soot into the wood and smeared it with beeswax, and he’d gone on doing it for a fortnight until the bow was as black as the shaft of St George’s lance. He’d tipped the bow with two pieces of nocked horn to hold a cord that was made from woven hemp strands that had been soaked in hoof-glue, then he’d whipped the cord where the arrow would rest with still more hemp. He’d stolen coins from his father to buy arrow heads in Dorchester, then made the shafts from ash and goose feathers and on that Easter morning he had twenty-three of those good arrows in his bag.

Thomas strung the bow, took a white-fledged arrow from the bag, then looked at the three men beside the church. They were a long way off, but the black bow was as big a weapon as any ever made and the power in its yew belly was awesome. One of the men had a simple mail coat, another a plain black surcoat while the third had a red and green jacket over his mail shirt, and Thomas decided that the most gaudily dressed man must be the raid’s leader and so he should die.

Thomas’s left hand shook as he drew the bow. He was dry-mouthed, frightened. He knew he would shoot wild so he lowered his arm and released the cord’s tension. Remember, he told himself, remember everything you have ever been taught. An archer does not aim, he kills. It is all in the head, in the arms, in the eyes, and killing a man is no different from shooting a hind. Draw and loose, that was all, and that was why he had practised for over ten years so that the act of drawing and loosing was as natural as breathing and as fluent as water flowing from a spring. Look and loose, do not think. Draw the string and let God guide the arrow.

Smoke thickened above Hookton, and Thomas felt an immense anger surge like a black humour and he pushed his left hand forward and drew back with the right and he never took his eyes off the red and green coat. He drew till the cord was beside his right ear and then he loosed.

That was the first time Thomas of Hookton ever shot an arrow at a man and he knew it was good as soon as it leaped from the string, for the bow did not quiver. The arrow flew true and he watched it curve down, sinking from the hill to strike the green and red coat hard and deep. He let a second arrow fly, but the man in the mail coat dropped and scurried to the church porch while the third man picked up the lance and ran towards the beach where he was hidden by the smoke.

Thomas had twenty-one arrows left. One each for the holy trinity, he thought, and another for every year of his life, and that life was threatened, for a dozen crossbowmen were running towards the hill. He loosed a third arrow, then ran back through the hazels. He was suddenly exultant, filled with a sense of power and satisfaction. In that one instant, as the first arrow slid into the sky, he knew he wanted nothing more from life. He was an archer. Oxford could go to hell for all he cared, for Thomas had found his joy. He whooped with delight as he ran uphill. Crossbow bolts ripped through the hazel leaves and he noted that they made a deep, almost humming noise as they flew. Then he was over the hill’s crest where he ran west for a few yards before doubling back to the summit. He paused long enough to loose another arrow, then turned and ran again.

Thomas led the Genoese crossbowmen a dance of death – from hill to hedgerow, along paths he had known since childhood – and like fools they followed him because their pride would not let them admit that they were beaten. But beaten they were, and two died before a trumpet sounded from the beach, summoning the raiders to their boats. The Genoese turned away then, stopping only to fetch the weapon, pouches, mail and coat of one of their dead, but Thomas killed another of them as they stooped over the body and this time the survivors just ran from him.

Thomas followed them down to the smoke-palled village. He ran past the alehouse, which was an inferno, and so to the shingle where the four boats were being shoved into the sea-reach. The sailors pushed off with long oars, then pulled out to sea. They towed the best three Hookton boats and left the others burning. The village was also burning, its thatch whirling into the sky in sparks and smoke and flaming scraps. Thomas shot one last useless arrow from the beach and watched it plunge into the sea short of the escaping raiders, then he turned away and went back through the stinking, burning, bloody village to the church, which was the only building the raiders had not set alight. The four companions of his vigil were dead, but Father Ralph still lived. He was sitting with his back against the altar. The bottom of his gown was dark with fresh blood and his long face was unnaturally white.

Thomas kneeled beside the priest. ‘Father?’

Father Ralph opened his eyes and saw the bow. He grimaced, though whether in pain or disapproval, Thomas could not tell.

‘Did you kill any of them, Thomas?’ the priest asked.

‘Yes,’ Thomas said, ‘a lot.’

Father Ralph grimaced and shuddered. Thomas reckoned the priest was one of the strongest men he had ever known, flawed perhaps, yet tough as a yew stave, but he was dying now and there was a whimper in his voice. ‘You don’t want to be a priest, do you, Thomas?’ He asked the question in French, his mother tongue.

‘No,’ Thomas answered in the same language.

‘You’re going to be a soldier,’ the priest said, ‘like your grandfather.’ He paused and whimpered as another bolt of pain ripped up from his belly. Thomas wanted to help him, but in truth there was nothing to be done. The Harlequin had run his sword into Father Ralph’s belly and only God could save the priest now. ‘I argued with my father,’ the dying man said, ‘and he disowned me. He disinherited me and I have refused to acknowledge him from that day to this. But you, Thomas, you are like him. Very like him. And you have always argued with me.’

‘Yes, Father,’ Thomas said. He took his father’s hand and the priest did not resist.

‘I loved your mother,’ Father Ralph said, ‘and that was my sin, and you are the fruit of that sin. I thought if you became a priest you could rise above sin. It floods us, Thomas, it floods us. It is everywhere. I have seen the devil, Thomas, seen him with my own eyes and we must fight him. Only the Church can do that. Only the Church.’ The tears flowed down his hollow unshaven cheeks. He looked past Thomas into the roof of the nave. ‘They stole the lance,’ he said sadly.

‘I know.’

‘My great-grandfather brought it from the Holy Land,’ Father Ralph said, ‘and I stole it from my father and my brother’s son stole it from us today.’ He spoke softly. ‘He will do evil with it. Bring it home, Thomas. Bring it home.’

‘I will,’ Thomas promised him. Smoke began to thicken in the church. The raiders had not fired it, but the thatch was catching the flames from the burning scraps that filled the air. ‘You say your brother’s son stole it?’ Thomas asked.

‘Your cousin,’ Father Ralph whispered, his eyes closed. ‘The one dressed in black. He came and stole it.’

‘Who is he?’ Thomas asked.

‘Evil,’ Father Ralph said, ‘evil.’ He moaned and shook his head.

‘Who is he?’ Thomas insisted.

‘Calix meus inebrians,’ Father Ralph said in a voice scarce above a whisper. Thomas knew it was a line from a psalm and meant ‘my cup makes me drunk’ and he reckoned his father’s mind was slipping as his soul hovered close to his body’s end.

‘Tell me who your father was!’ Thomas demanded. Tell me who I am, he wanted to say. Tell me who you are, Father. But Father Ralph’s eyes were closed though he still gripped Thomas’s hand hard. ‘Father?’ Thomas asked. The smoke dipped in the church and sifted out through the window Thomas had broken to make his escape. ‘Father?’

But his father never spoke again. He died, and Thomas, who had fought against him all his life, wept like a child. At times he had been ashamed of his father, but in that smoky Easter morning he learned that he loved him. Most priests disowned their children, but Father Ralph had never hidden Thomas. He had let the world think what it wanted and he had freely confessed to being a man as well as a priest and if he sinned in loving his housekeeper then it was a sweet sin that he never denied even if he did say acts of contrition for it and feared that in the life hereafter he would be punished for it.

Thomas pulled his father away from the altar. He did not want the body to be burned when the roof collapsed. The silver chalice that Thomas had accidentally crushed was under the dead man’s blood-soaked robe and Thomas pocketed it before dragging the corpse out into the graveyard. He laid his father beside the body of the man in the red and green coat and Thomas crouched there, weeping, knowing that he had failed in his first Easter vigil. The devil had stolen the Sacraments and St George’s lance was gone and Hookton was dead.

At midday Sir Giles Marriott came to the village with a score of men armed with bows and billhooks. Sir Giles himself wore mail and carried a sword, but there was no enemy left to fight and Thomas was the only person left in the village.

‘Three yellow hawks on a blue field,’ Thomas told Sir Giles.

‘Thomas?’ Sir Giles asked, puzzled. He was the lord of the manor and an old man now, though in his time he had carried a lance against both the Scots and the French. He had been a good friend to Thomas’s father, but he did not understand Thomas, whom he reckoned had grown wild as a wolf.

‘Three yellow hawks on a blue field,’ Thomas said vengefully, ‘are the arms of the man who did this.’ Were they the arms of his cousin? He did not know. There were so many questions left by his father.

‘I don’t know whose badge that is,’ Sir Giles said, ‘but I shall pray by God’s bowels he screams in hell for this work.’

There was nothing to be done until the fires had burned themselves out, and only then could the bodies be dragged from the ashes. The burned dead had been blackened and grotesquely shrunk by the heat so that even the tallest men looked like children. The dead villagers were taken to the graveyard for a proper burial, but the bodies of the four crossbowmen were dragged down to the beach and there stripped naked.

‘Did you do this?’ Sir Giles asked Thomas.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then I thank you.’

‘My first dead Frenchmen,’ Thomas said angrily.

‘No,’ Sir Giles said, and he lifted one of the men’s tunics to show Thomas the badge of a green chalice embroidered on its sleeve. ‘They’re from Genoa,’ Sir Giles said. ‘The French hire them as crossbowmen. I’ve killed a few in my time, but there are always more where they come from. You know what the badge is?’

‘A cup?’

Sir Giles shook his head. ‘The Holy Grail. They reckon they have it in their cathedral. I’m told it’s a great green thing, carved from an emerald and brought back from the crusades. I should like to see it one day.’

‘Then I shall bring it to you,’ Thomas said bitterly, ‘just as I shall bring back our lance.’