I looked up to see Wace wheeling about my flank with a spear in each hand. He tossed me one and I caught it, and as the bearded one tried to rise I used both hands to sink it into his thigh, before tugging it free and turning it upwards, driving underneath his jerkin and into his groin. He bellowed out in agony, and I plunged the steel deeper and deeper still, twisting so that it went in all the further, until his cries trailed off and I was sure he was dead.
All was confusion. The rebels, who until a few moments ago had been fleeing, were suddenly turning upon their pursuers, reinforced by a line, three ranks deep, of helmeted and mailed spearmen, who must have been hiding in the long grass, for I could see nowhere else they could have come from. Horses screamed as a forest of blades sprang up towards their bellies; those that were not impaled reared up and kicked their hooves and tossed their heads in terror, only to turn and find themselves with nowhere to go, trapped between the English spears and the rest of the oncoming Normans. Into that chaos the enemy piled themselves. They buried their steel in the animals’ bellies and dragged knights from the saddle, setting upon them with knives and seaxes.
‘Fall back!’ Wace was shouting, though no one but me seemed to hear him.
I looked around for Fyrheard and saw him scrambling out of the gully, which was half as deep as a man was high, and thirty paces from end to end. The rebels had dug ditches amongst the tussocks so as to break up our charge, overlaying them with branches and reeds so as to disguise them, and into those same ditches we had ridden blindly, like fools.
From every direction came cries of alarm and of pain. I left the spear in the bearded Englishman’s groin, for I had at last spotted my sword, and recognised it for mine because of the turquoise stone that I’d had set into its pommel. I sheathed it, hauled myself from the ditch and ran to Fyrheard. His eyes were wide, and on seeing me approach he tensed, but then he recognised me. The fall had clearly shaken him, but he looked unhurt, and for that I thanked God as I glanced around and saw those that had been less lucky, flailing in the gullies and struggling to stand on broken legs. I rubbed the side of his neck in reassurance, but knew we could not tarry here. The stench of death was everywhere, and it was the stench not just of blood and spilt innards, but of piss and shit and vomit too. The corpses of our fallen countrymen and their steeds lay strewn across the field, along with many more who were not yet dead but whose end was near, desperately crying out for help in French and in English.
‘Withdraw,’ cried a familiar voice. The gold threads of the Malet banner glinted away to my right, and beneath it Robert was waving, trying to attract the attention not just of his conroi but everyone else who was with us. ‘Withdraw towards the shore, back towards the lion banner!’
Turning, he pointed his sword back in the direction of the bridge and spurred his steed into a gallop. Around a third of our horsemen, I reckoned, had made the crossing by then: some three hundred knights marshalling beneath the colours and devices of their lords. King Guillaume himself rode up and down the battle-line, bellowing exhortations to them and to those of our foot-warriors who still remained.
The enemy were swarming forward like carrion birds around a corpse, taking advantage of the confusion they had wrought. On either side of us Normans were fleeing on horseback and on foot, running, riding, limping, a few being helped along by their comrades. Doing their best to cover their retreat, around fifty paces away, were Serlo and Pons, Eudo and his knights, and I recognised them by the emblems on their shields, but even at a glance I could see they were outnumbered and close to being outflanked. For the conroi’s strength lies in its swiftness and in the weight of the charge, but once its force has been met and its drive is halted, it becomes vulnerable, and I knew that they couldn’t stand toe to toe for long against all those English spears.
Robert was already riding back to join the rest of our host, but Wace still lingered, along with his hearth-knights: the quiet-spoken Gascon whose name I still hadn’t learnt, and a dark-haired lad not much older than Godric but almost twice the size, who was known to everyone as Tor, which in the French tongue means Tower.
‘Wace,’ I yelled, and as soon as I had his attention: ‘We have to get to Eudo!’
He nodded breathlessly. His right cheek, I saw, was streaming with crimson where a fresh cut had been laid across it, to add to those he had taken at H?stinges, although I wasn’t sure if he realised it.
Without further hesitation, I leapt up into the saddle and dug my heels in. Sweat rolled off my brow, stinging my eyes, and for a few moments all I could see was a watery blur, but still I pounded on. Already the enemy had surrounded Eudo and the others, and I knew we didn’t have much time. The ground had been trampled flat by the passage of so many feet and hooves, which meant that we could see the ditches easily now, and we swerved around them.