Also by Michael Jecks
The Last Templar
The Merchant’s Partner
A Moorland Hanging
The Crediton Killings
The Abbot’s Gibbet
The Leper’s Return
Squire Throwleigh’s Heir
Belladonna at Belstone
The Traitor of St Giles
The Boy Bishop’s Glovemaker
The Tournament of Blood
The Sticklepath Strangler
The Devil’s Acolyte
The Mad Monk of Gidleigh
The Templar’s Penance
The Outlaws of Ennor
The Tolls of Death
The Chapel of Bones
The Butcher of St Peter’s
A Friar’s Bloodfeud
The Death Ship of Dartmouth
The Malice of Unnatural Death
Dispensation of Death
The Templar, the Queen and Her Lover
The Prophecy of Death
The King of Thieves
The Bishop Must Die
The Oath
King’s Gold
City of Fiends
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Michael Jecks 2014
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Michael Jecks to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
HB ISBN: 978-1-47111-106-8
TPB ISBN: 978-1-47111-107-5
EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-47111-109-9
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
For my parents, Beryl and Peter,
with much love.
A new direction . . .
And
For Andy and Mandy
in the hope this may distract you both from
the events of the last horrible couple of years.
Lots of love.
Sir John de Sully
Knight Banneret from Devon
Richard Bakere
Esquire to Sir John
Grandarse
under Sir John, the Centener: leader of a hundred men
Berenger Fripper
the leader of one vintaine of twenty men under Grandarse
Members of Berenger’s vintaine:
Clip
Eliot
Jack Fletcher
Jon Furrier
Gilbert ‘Gil’
Luke
Matt
Geoff atte Mill
Oliver
Walt
Will ‘The Wisp’
Ed ‘The Donkey’
orphan found by the vintaine in Portsmouth
Roger
vintener of the second vintaine
Mark Tyler/Mark of London
Roger’s most recent recruit
Archibald Tanner
a ‘gynour’ trained in gunpowder and cannon
Erbin
leader of a party of Welsh fighters
Dewi and Owain
Welshmen under Erbin
King Edward III
King of England
King Edward II
the King’s predecessor, rumoured to have died in Berkeley Castle
King Philippe VI
King of France
Edward of Woodstock
son of Edward III, later known as ‘the Black Prince’
Earl Thomas of Warwick
a noted peer of the realm and Marshal of England
Béatrice Pouillet
daughter of a gunpowder merchant in France
In those far-off days when I was still at school, I was a member of a book club that was devoted to non-fiction books on warfare, and bought vast numbers from them. They remain on my bookshelves, the greater part of them very well-thumbed and yellowed, but all offering a haven of peace whenever I need it. Lyn MacDonald’s They Called It Passchendaele (which I read when only eleven), books on the Somme, Max Hastings’ The Korean War, and books about the Das Reich Panzer Division and Bomber Command – they are still there in front of me as I type this.
But one in particular, sadly, is missing. It was a title I enjoyed so much that I kept offering it to other people to read. One of them took it – and lost it. I have mourned the loss of that book for many years. It was The Hundred Years War by Desmond Seward, first published by Constable in 1978. I must have bought my copy in about 1983 or so, and I read it twice, back to back, in my cottage in Oxted, Surrey.
The book is a gem of concise, undramatic but enthralling writing. So much so that I was forced to buy a new copy as soon as I was able to do so. Of course, it’s not the only book on the Hundred Years War, and, if I’m brutally honest, it’s probably not the best. There are many other titles, from Jonathan Sumption’s superb studies of the same subject to books by experts like Terry Jones (I have sung his praises many times before, but I’ll do it again: if you haven’t read Chaucer’s Knight: Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary it is high time you did) – but it was Seward’s book that fired my imagination in the first place. It was his book that persuaded me to find out more about this terrible time, and his book that inspired me to write about the Battle of Crécy.
It is difficult to write a book that includes the lives of real people.
In Medieval Murderers, the performance group I founded more than a decade ago, we have had many debates about whether or not to use real characters from history. When I set out to create my medieval world, I was determined not to look at matters from the point of view of real characters, because I had a secret dread of someone doing that to me. I could all too easily envisage a time when someone read an article on their . . . what will it be in a few hundred years? On their wall? In their retina? Well, no matter where they would see it, they would read about this fellow Jecks who was alive in the early twenty-first century, and might want to write about him. They would have him as a witty, clever fellow, no doubt. Fair enough. And a criminal investigator. And they would state that I was vegan, teetotal, a cat-loving, anti-hunting, football-supporting campaigner for the European Union. In short, I would have to give up my proud disdain for all things psychic and take up haunting the foul blighter for his or her calumnies.
You can see why I did not want to take a real person and infuse them with my own feelings, beliefs and prejudices. It just wouldn’t be fair. A kind of ‘post-mortem slander’. That is why, in my earlier books, although I make some use of characters like Walter Stapledon, I don’t look at the world through his eyes. He is simply included because he was there, in Exeter, at the time. I couldn’t ignore him.
However, over time my attitude has changed. There are some situations which do need the perspective of key players. And for this book, I chose a man who has fascinated me for many years: Sir John de Sully.
If you look him up on the internet, you will find his life documented at the website for
the Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross and the Mother of Him Who Hung Thereon in Crediton (http://www.creditonparishchurch.org.uk/Sully.html).
An extraordinary man, Sir John was questioned in his one hundred and sixth year, because of a dispute between two other knights about the arms they were allowed to display. He died, apparently, the following year. But in his long life, he had survived battles all through the Edwardian period, from (probably) Bannockburn through to Najera. That means that the last time he went to war in armour, he was some eighty-six years old.
His character can only be guessed at. In reality, of course, he was probably a hugely aggressive man, arrogant, proud and independent: a terrible enemy. But he came from Devon, too, and I have deliberately made him a more complex fellow and not a mere brute.
Above all, this is the story of a vintaine. A small group of Englishmen in a foreign land, fighting and killing and dying for a cause which they only dimly understood. But they knew that there was money to be looted, that there were women, and there was wine. They were not saints. Soldiers rarely are. But what they achieved was astonishing, and for that, if nothing else, they deserve admiration.
The Battle of Crécy has always been a source of argument. Firstly because most historians find it inconceivable that the commander of such a relatively small force could have deliberately sought to meet the full might of the massive French army in battle; secondly because there has been hot debate over the precise battle-formation used by the English during that battle.
I do not presume to argue the cases either way. You can find the arguments marvellously summarised in War Cruel and Sharp by Clifford J. Rogers, Boydell Press, 2000. In Chapter 10 ‘Invasion of 1346: Strategic Options and Historiography’, he goes through them on both sides in some detail. However, it seems clear to me that the English King Edward III would have known that he ran the significant risk of battle by taking war to the north of France. He had tweaked the French King’s tail too often already to think he would escape unhindered once more. The prestige of Philippe VI was at stake.
For my story, I have assumed that the argument from Rogers’s book is correct: that the English King knew he would force the French to battle and was confident nonetheless, convinced that his massed archers would be so overwhelming that the French must be crushed. He suffered setbacks, true, especially on the long march to the Somme, but I believe he had a strategic ambition to draw the French to him on well-prepared ground in a planned manner.
The second issue has given me a great deal more heartache than the simple question of whether the English intended to fight. How did King Edward dispose his troops?
I have resorted to many books in researching the battle, from Jonathan Sumption’s superb Trial By Battle, Rogers’s War Cruel and Sharp mentioned above, J.F. Verbruggen’s The Art of Warfare in Western Europe, Maurice Keen’s Medieval Warfare, Kelly DeVries’s Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century . . . all the way to Ian Mortimer’s The Perfect King: The Life of King Edward III, with stop-offs at Froissart and other chroniclers.
Some think that there were three battles (groups of fighting men, in modern terms ‘Battalions’ is the nearest word), with English soldiers spread side-by-side over the top of the hill, with groups of archers between these groups of men, and more archers at either side. I disagree, and side with those who consider the next scenario more likely: that the English had the three battles one placed before the other, and with two large groups of archers at either flank with cannon, so as to keep up a withering fire both on the killing ground before them on the plains, and, as the enemy grew nearer, launching their weapons and missiles directly into the flanks of the French advance. Not only is this the most likely formation to have achieved the victory won at such low cost to the English – but also it was the formation practised and rehearsed in so many prior battles.
But after all my research, there is still a margin for error. I have occasionally guessed at mysteries such as, where precisely was Sir John in the battle-line? – and where my guesses have missed their mark, I can only apologise. Any errors are my own.
This story, then, is the story of soldiers through the centuries, and I have unashamedly used scenes as described by George MacDonald Fraser in his magnificent autobiography Quartered Safe Out Here, as well as many contemporary accounts. The story of fighting men, and their experiences in battle, has not changed all that much. Their lives are full of fear, boredom, misery and sudden horror. But they also enjoy making jokes at each others’ expense, and gradually they learn to trust and rely on one another.
Finally, I should say that when I was writing this, I had in my mind the young men and women who are fighting with the British Army in Afghanistan.
May they all return safe and well.
Michael Jecks
North Dartmoor
January 2013
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
St-Vaast-la-Hogue, 12 July 1346
Berenger Fripper, vintener of this pox-ridden mob of sixteen men under Sir John de Sully, ducked as another wave splashed over the gunwale and drenched him.
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ he muttered, wiping a hand over his face to clear it of water. White foam was everywhere, and he was already frozen to the marrow in the bitter wind. He cursed the day he’d agreed to lead the men on this raid.
Grandarse, his centener, and leader of four more vintaines, bellowed, ‘Get ready!’ near his ear, and Berenger felt like snapping back that they were all ready – they had been ready this past hour or more – but he swallowed his resentment. Discipline was all-important in the army. Any diminution of respect weakened a fighting force, which was why punishment for insubordination was so savage, and rightly so.
Grandarse shouldered his way past. The older man was built like a barrel, with a belly that declared his love of ale and food. His eyes were blue like the sky, his skin leathery from living rough, marching for his King. He was a hard man, used to the ways of war, but the Yorkshireman was honest enough, and kindly to men he trusted. He respected Berenger’s men: such fellows were the backbone of the King’s army, and Grandarse knew it.
Another big wave, another wipe of his fac
e. Berenger hated ships. This was no way to go to war. The rolling decks and constant spray, the sound of horses whinnying, almost screaming in fear belowdecks, the constant taste of sickness in his throat and the smell of vomit all about him . . . it all reminded him of Sluys, two years before. Christ’s ballocks, that had been a fight! He was an old man now. Already six and thirty, and a fighter for his King for the last eleven years. He knew he shouldn’t feel such trepidation at the prospect of battle.
Yet he did.
He shifted the strap of his pack where it had rubbed a sore patch at his collarbone. The salt in the air was making it sting. Another wave crashed at the side of the ship, spume exploding into his face and beard, and he swore viciously.
Beside him, young Ed was kneeling and retching, his belly emptied many long hours before.
‘Get up, boy!’ Berenger snarled. ‘You want to kneel when the French come and beat you all about your bleeding head?’
He hauled on the boy’s arm until Ed was up and could lean on the wale himself, his fist clenched in white determination about a rope.
An odd boy. Too young for this kind of fight, Berenger told himself again. The lads had thought he’d make them a good mascot if nothing else.
They had found him lying in the gutter outside a Portsmouth tavern, dazed from the blow that had broken his tooth and bloodied his face. If he was the victim of a robbery, the thief had poor judgement in selecting his victims. A lad that old could have little indeed worth taking. Clip had wanted to see if he had any money, but Geoff shouldered him aside and picked up the pathetic bundle, carrying Ed back to their lodgings with a gentleness that surprised the other men. With luck, Geoff said defensively, the boy’d earn his keep by fetching and carrying. They could do with a lad to bring arrows or water in battle, and bear food on the march.
Well, that was as may be. As far as Berenger was concerned, Ed was a waste of space. He was a boy, and they needed men. Grandarse didn’t care: he would get money for the extra head, and that was all he cared about; but Berenger felt responsible for the fellow. Just now the boy’s head hung low, drool trailing from his chin. How, in God’s name, the son of a fisherman could be so useless and pukey on board a ship, he didn’t know. The lad was the most cack-handed prick he had ever met. He wouldn’t meet Berenger’s eyes but stood shivering, staring miserably at the land ahead, as did all the others.