Master of War

10




By midday the English army had formed up on the hill slope with the woods of Crécy at their back and the town nearby to the south-east. The windmill on top of the ridge served as the King’s headquarters and he settled his division there, a place where his standard would be flown for all to see. On the forward slope were two battalions, comprising a mixture of infantry and dismounted cavalry. The battles across northern France had depleted the King’s army. There were only about four thousand surviving archers – a thousand to be deployed on each flank and two thousand at the rear in reserve with the King. The forward and most dangerous edge of the battleground was held by the vanguard under the Prince, and with him stood the great names of English nobility, their surcoats, shields, banners and pennons declaring to the enemy that they were the prize for any ambitious French knight. Warwick, Northampton, Cobham, Audley, Stafford and Holland – men who had led by example and fought with a tireless zeal to engage and kill their enemy and who were fired with the knowledge that they would be pursued no longer. They knew no quarter would be given and that knowledge only strengthened their determination to be the ones doing the killing. The marshals of the army, Warwick and de Harcourt, gave captains their orders. War horses were removed to the rear as knights prepared to fight on foot. Hobelars and Welsh spearmen held the centre ground with the men-at-arms, and Blackstone’s archers were among them, less than one hundred paces from the Prince himself. They were the added force in place to keep any surge of Frenchmen from reaching the boy Prince. When the French swung from the south through the folding land the vanguard would be the first to take the full attack. Northampton’s division was to the Prince’s left and slightly back: added protection should the French be foolish enough to try to attack from the marshier ground at the bottom of the hill. The preparations were made. The King ordered his men to rest and eat whatever food was left to them. He wanted them strong when the enemy came at them. There was nothing more to do but wait.

The men sat on the ground. Richard Blackstone lay on his back watching a cloud change shape, tracing its contortions with his finger. Men ate whatever food they had been given. The muggy August heat threatened rain, and sweat trickled down their backs. Blackstone was pleased he wore no armour.

‘They won’t come now. Too late in the day,’ Will Longdon said as he checked the fletchings, fingering each arrow, and then, like the others, pressing its point into the ground, making a small forest of ash and goose feather. Each archer had been given two sheaves and each sheaf was twenty-four arrows. These men could loose a dozen arrows and more every minute. Thirty thousand arrows would fall from the clouding sky in the first two minutes of the attack. The carnage would be terrifying and no matter how Blackstone tried to imagine it, he could not. He had never seen an army stand and fight.

‘They’ll be wanting food and a bed for the night and then the Kings’ll parlay and decide on a time tomorrow, which suits me, because I could eat a donkey,’ Weston grumbled and smoothed a hand along the bend of his bow stave, seeming to derive comfort from it.

‘They’ll come,’ one of the Welshmen said. ‘They can’t wait to finish us off. Then they’ll bedroll and eat.’

‘Aye, they like a good slaughter, do the French,’ said Matthew Hampton.

And a murmur ran along the line. There was no doubt who were the underdogs. Blackstone felt for his talisman and the rough length of linen with the embroidered bird. Two women guarded his life – Arianrhod and Christiana. He looked at Richard, who still gazed with childish wonder at the sky; a boy who could kill as well as any man and barely a year younger than the Prince of Wales, who stood in the van of battle. Richard seemed not to understand the meaning of fear. He had proved his daring and courage often enough.

Blackstone was afraid but did not show it.

Of which son would the father have been most proud?

A roar, like a battle cry, broke Blackstone’s reverie. The men were on their feet. Above them on the ridge the King’s banner – the lions of England and the lilies of France – unfurled in the humid air and beside it the red-painted dragon battle standard.

‘Drago! Drago!’ the men roared.

The cheers settled as the King rode down on a palfrey, his great war horse already tethered with the thousands of others. The marshals Warwick and de Harcourt with the constable of the army, the battle-hardened Northampton, rode among the troops. The King, bareheaded, had not yet put on his armour and wore a green and gold pourpoint, the heavy, padded linen undershirt worn to make the armour a more comfortable fit. As he moved along the line of men, he pointed with a white baton to those he recognized. Then he would stop and address them, each of the three divisions. Blackstone and those around him could not yet hear the King’s words, but laughter and then cheers marked his passage. By the time the King drew rein in front of the men-at-arms and archers where Blackstone stood, the anticipation of being so close to their King ran through them like a shiver down a horse’s back.

‘Have we rested enough from our walk across Normandy, lads?’

‘We have!’

‘Aye!’

Men yelled out their answer.

‘And with a lesson or two in swimming, sire!’ one called. The King smiled and the men laughed.

‘Then we think it’s time to fight this King who lays claim to these lands and who believes that once he has beaten us this day he will settle in our kingdom and let his men become acquainted with those we call our own.’

The roar of disapproval brought another smile to the King’s face, but then his brow furrowed and his voice lost its cheerfulness. ‘We urge you all to stand your ground, never yield, do not break ranks, because we have the better of this King, my cousin. We know him and his army. They do not lack courage; they have a ferocity that is well known and this furor franciscus will spew its rage onto us all. But they cannot win this battle. They cannot, I swear to you. English and Welsh blood alike will be shed, that is a promise we can make and keep, but the day is already won, that is a promise we make in the eyes of God. Our own son will stand with you, he will live or die at your side. There is no ransom to be had from the capture of a noble knight or lord, and there is to be no robbing of the dead. This is our day of glory. Their destruction will be spoken of for ages to come. They do not know what fury it is we possess. Keep my words close to you. We take no prisoners. We give no mercy. Kill them. Kill them all,’ he commanded.


The blood-lust roar reverberated across the hills.

Richard Blackstone had not taken his eyes from his King. The silent world he inhabited was something he had understood since childhood. The scent of the wind and the change in weather comforted his senses as much as the colours of field and sky. This man chosen by God had looked at him and the air had vibrated with a hum as those around him bared their teeth and bellowed at the sky. They were angels on earth who would slay anyone who offered a threat. His brother had not looked his way and the warmth in his chest he once felt had deserted him. The fighting had been easy. It required strength and the ability to kill without feeling. He had both. Life in his caged world channelled his emotions elsewhere. The girl at home had once given him that warmth and he had tried to tell her through clumsy gestures and incoherent sounds. She would smile and stroke his head and reach down for his manhood and bring him to her. The soft moistness of her brought tears to his eyes. Nothing in the world was as tender as the rhythmic movement of that girl who laid her hands on his broken face and eased his lips onto her breasts. When her eyes closed and she smiled, he followed her into the same darkness to try to share that moment. He had not meant to kill her. The act was something he had buried within himself. When his brother had found out his secret it was as if a knife had cut into him. Now nothing could bring his brother back.

The long-haired men with spears, some with strange markings painted on their faces, avoided his gaze. The men who pulled their war bows, just as his father had taught him, were closer now than his own brother. They would jig and dance and some would fall down from drink, but all were simple savages who could kill to stay alive. There was no regret in slaying others to keep your own breath from bubbling through your chest from a sword thrust.

He looked down the line. Men in chain mail and armour stood ready, the spearmen leaned on their weapons and the men with bows had taken their places between the ranks. He could see a young man kneel before the King and the King kissed him on the lips as his brother once did to him. The King loved that boy just as his father had loved him. The boy was surrounded by the men who wore armour and coloured cloth, there were flags held around him. And then the father left the son and the boy pulled on his helm. He looked around him. Men were not bellowing now. Their jaws were set tight and their eyes squinted into the late afternoon light. He turned to look to his front and saw the green hills making a startling contrast with the colours of a multitude of men and horses.

The French had arrived.

Sir Gilbert ordered his men to their positions.

‘This is where we stand or die, lads. When the honour of France comes around that hill they’ll have their Oriflamme fluttering against the sky. It’s not blood-red without reason. It’s their sacred battle flag, blessed by every whoremongering priest in Christendom, and it means they’ll not be taking prisoners either. Any of us. King, Prince, earl or common man, they’ll mean to kill us all unless we kill them first. God bless you, lads. I’ll not leave this field until I am dead or our King’s enemy is defeated.’

Sir Gilbert took up his position in the front rank.

Elfred went to join his archers on the extreme flank and touched Blackstone on the shoulder as he passed by.

‘Till later, Thomas. Aim true. They mustn’t break the line.’

Blackstone nodded; the fear was already gnawing at his bowels, but he would not let his men see it. The sound of trumpets and kettledrums rolled across the hillside.

The French were coming to slaughter them.


Five thousand Genoese crossbowmen had been hurried along the road from Abbeville. Behind them the French mounted men-at-arms and knights could barely restrain their war horses. The way to fight a war was to charge, lances cut down to six feet to kill the third line of defenders once the first had been skewered by crossbow quarrels and the second smashed by iron-shod hooves. Sword, mace, mallet and axe would scythe or cripple the rest. The world knew that the French army was the most powerful and efficient fighting force and, on this day at Crécy-en-Ponthieu, thirty thousand of them would crush an upstart King with fewer than ten thousand fighting men under his command. They who dared to confront King Philip VI of France were going to die.

As they rode towards the battlefield knights tilted their heads back with open visors, grateful for the rain that offered a respite from the humid air and dusty roads. At this pace they would soon be at the English lines. A long August twilight would give them time enough to end the day in victory.

The veil of rain that swept across the landscape swirled towards the men on the hill awaiting the onslaught. Without need of command the archers unstrung their bows and tucked the cords inside jackets and beneath leather caps. They were taking no chances of the damp stretching them and reducing the arrows’ flight. The downpour passed, the clouds blew further inland and sunlight spread a warm light that turned the wet grassland to gold and glistened off wet French armour and shields.

Blackstone glanced behind him and squinted at the low sun. The King and the marshals had chosen this place more carefully than he had realized. Not only would the attacking French be clambering uphill but they would be facing into the westering sun.

‘Here they come,’ someone said calmly as the archers restrung their bows.

The tramping of thousands of feet and hooves vibrated through the ground. Richard Blackstone could feel it more keenly than most, the trembling land speaking to him. He breathed in the damp air and held it for a moment in his nostrils and lungs. The grass smelled sweet and the air carried a fragrance from meadows and forest. He moaned a sound of contentment. Blackstone turned and looked at his grinning face. The sadness he felt at the loss of the mute boy’s innocence could not be concealed. He reached out and touched the boy’s shoulder. He would give anything not to have known about the girl’s death. Richard read the pain in his brother’s eyes. Blackstone touched his heart and lips and then reached out his hand. A final gesture of love before the uncertainty of battle. The crooked-jawed boy took it and pressed his wet mouth against the rough palm.

Genoese crossbowmen and marines, whose numbers equalled more than half of the English army, roared insults at the stoic English. They were the first of three divisions wide, three deep, the huge Oriflamme battle flag carried by the rear division for all the English to see. The crossbowmen were soaked, and they were tired and hungry. The French treated them with disdain and had hurried them to the battlefield. When crossbowmen loosed their bolts it took time to crank their weapons’ mechanisms to fire again. In a set battle they would normally be protected by large shields big enough to hide behind as they reloaded, but today their French paymasters had left these paviseurs with the baggage train. It was expected that the crossbowmen would cut down the English front ranks and then the armoured destriers and knights would do the rest. French impatience and a cloudburst would prove the downfall of the Genoese.

The English faced the bellowing ranks now within crossbow range and watched as several thousand steel-sprung bolts were loosed. As they fluttered earthwards the second rank had moved through them and fired. Massed trumpets and drums picked up their tempo, a cacophony of bravado. But the English and Welsh ranks did not flinch. If those bolts had fallen into them it would have been lethal, but they fell short, striking the ground in front of the English men-at-arms. Facing the sun and shooting uphill, they had misjudged their distance and the twisted rawhide cords on the crossbows had stretched from the rain.


A murmur of satisfaction rippled through English ranks.

‘Poor bastards,’ Will Longdon muttered. ‘Is that the best they can do?’

They could hear the commands of the centenars from the right and left flanks. ‘Nock! Mark! Draw! Loose!’

Blackstone and the others craned their necks as the dense hail of arrows shivered through the air. Then the thunderclaps of the ribalds, bound four-inch barrels mounted on small carts that spewed smoke and metal pieces, added their firepower. Edward had placed them each side of the archers’ flanks. They were not effective killers like the bowmen, but their booming and their belching smoke and flame caused fear and confusion, ending in death when the arrows fell. It was carnage. The English went on loosing and the iron-tipped arrows plummeted into flesh and bone. The Genoese broke and ran.

‘Look at that!’ Blackstone said as he saw hundreds of French knights ride forward, trampling the Genoese and then killing those survivors that sword and lance could find. Sir Gilbert turned where he stood on the front rank, shield raised, sword held in the loop of his belt because every man-at-arms and knight held a lance, ready to jam into the muscles of the French stallions – those that had escaped being crippled by the pits – when they reached the lines.

‘All right, lads, that’s the French King’s brother doing that. He’s an impatient bastard, is the Duke of Alen?on, and he wants to get at us. He’s getting a few obstacles out of the way first. If they close on us cry out for Saint George. Shout loud. Not everyone has surcoat or shield to identify themselves. Here they come. Archers!’

The pounding charge surged across the dead Genoese, a line of knights so broad and deep that Blackstone could not see the divisions behind them. War horses, snorting nostrils blood-red, carried the armoured men forward at the charge. The destriers, heads and chests encased in arrow-deflecting plate, galloped shoulder to shoulder, battle-trained into a ruthless, crushing mass of unstoppable power. ‘Broadheads!’ Blackstone shouted and the archers nocked the ragged-edged hunting arrows. The triangular barbed heads would rip muscle and tear vital organs. The archers on the flanks loosed another cloud of arrows, and moments before they arced out of the sky Blackstone aimed at the horses’ legs, pushing aside the long cloth coverings, the rich hues of the trappers rustling like the knights’ banners.

‘Draw!’ His left leg went a stride forward, the bow came up, the rough hemp cord pulled back to his ear. A magnificent animal barely controlled by the knight on its back was his target. ‘Loose!’

The fatal, hurtling arrowstorm struck the French from above just as their horses screamed in agony from Blackstone’s lower trajectory. A tumbling, broken mass staggered on the wet grass sluiced with blood, desperate for a foothold.

‘Sweet Christ,’ a pagan Welshman blasphemed, unheard by the archers who had already loosed three more arrows into the flailing hooves and crippled knights. Arrows pierced the terrified horses’ chests and flanks, making deep wounds that bled the vitality and life from them and inflicted more pain than any animal could endure. Legs snapped as they went down under the weight of their riders and the horsemen ploughing on from behind. Mud-spattered knights raked their spurs into their stallions’ flanks, kneeing them to manoeuvre around crippled and crazed horses.

‘Keep it steady!’ Blackstone shouted, as he bent and loosed, creating a rhythm of fire that was unrelenting. ‘Don’t waste your arrows. Aim and shoot. Aim and shoot!’

The French kept coming.

And dying.

A massive heartbeat of French kettledrums thumped louder, urging the knights forward. Trumpets blew a varying pitch as if their power could knock down the English. Packed men herded closer, lances down, shields raised. Some bore wounds but rode on, and those whose wealth afforded quality armour that deflected the archers’ attempts to slaughter them cried Montjoie! and came at the English in all their pride and savagery. Horses went nose-down at the pit-traps, others carried horrific wounds, but their courageous hearts pumped blood to muscle and sinew and kept their momentum going, urged on by vicious spurs from men who now gave no thought for the beasts they had once cherished.

Sir Gilbert’s men-at-arms stepped into the fray and cut the survivors down. No man died easily and the heavy clang of sword against armour echoed up and down the lines. It was hard, brutal work that demanded strength and stamina. Men wearing seventy pounds of armour had no chance of regaining their feet if they went down. To slip or be stunned meant death. Thousands of crossbowmen were dead, hundreds of knights lay mortally wounded and not one defender had died. The French men-at-arms fell back to regroup out of the archers’ range. The horses’ screams were pitiful.

‘We should go and finish the wretched creatures,’ Will Longdon said. ‘It’d be a mercy.’

‘You know what the King said, Will: no mercy today,’ said Blackstone as he counted the arrows he had left. ‘Arrows?’ he called to the men.

‘Three,’ Will Longdon said.

‘I’ve five,’ John Weston moaned. ‘Couple of the fletchings look as though they’d throw the flight.’

‘It’ll be close range, John. Aim and loose,’ Blackstone told him. Others in the company were low on arrows. Each man called what he had: two, three, one, four, none. He could see boys and clerics running from the rear carrying tied sheaves to replenish the archers.

Sir Gilbert turned. ‘They’ll get closer next time. There’s so many of them they’ll get through eventually. You archers be ready to move back, you’ve no defence against men like these.’

‘We’ll stand our ground, Sir Gilbert. Once we have arrows we can take them head on.’

Sir Gilbert nodded, too tired to offer either admonition or praise. Boys ran with waterskins and buckets from the baggage train. Fighting men scooped handfuls, tipped the skins, sucked the life-giving moisture into their parched mouths.

The lull in the battle gave men a few moments to lean on their swords, slump onto the grass and loosen their helmets. Blackstone, sweat-soaked and hurting, considered that these armoured men could take no more battering. The fallen horses and pit-traps had slowed the French advance; they were no longer a disciplined attacking line. The ground had forced them to manoeuvre into fighting pockets of men, which left them vulnerable to infantry attack from the sides. Swarming soldiers, knights and spearmen were bringing down horsemen unable to defend themselves on all sides.

Then back came the French. Sweat-slathered horses, white flecks of foam splashing their bridles and legs, charged at full gallop; their sheer weight of numbers would bring them into the English lines. The English watched as another storm of harrowing pain fell from the sky into the determined attackers. Knights held fast in their high-pommelled saddles swayed and slumped, dead or mortally wounded as their brave horses carried them forward. Less than fifty yards from the front line the first of the horses stepped into the foot-deep pits. Men could hear the crack of bone from where they stood.

Despite the leather guard Blackstone felt the skin of his fingers tear from the constant pressure of releasing the bowcord. His strength was not diminishing; if anything, his arms found a strength he never knew existed. He was beyond pain. This butchery was a slaughter that no man had witnessed before. That’s as much glory as you’ll see in a battle, Sir Gilbert had told him when he was vomiting at the crossroads in Normandy after he had killed his first man. There could not be enough vomit in the world to puke on this field.


Richard Blackstone was firing at a greater rate than any of the men. Blackstone could almost see his arrow strikes. Whereas some archers would miss because of the swirling mêlée of men and horse, Richard’s arrows struck home every time.

And the French came on. Over their dead comrades, past the white-eyed, terrified horses, flailing in agony, through the rainstorm of high-angled arrows that fell with such velocity that plate armour was no defence. Knights were shot through with a yard of ash, skewered to their saddles.

But still they came, their fury unabated, their lust to kill unquenched. Even battle-hardened English knights could do little more than admire such awesome courage. And kill them. And still the French had not breached the English lines. The knights urged their horses away from the archers’ flanks, aiming themselves squarely at the Prince of Wales. His banner, and those of the nobles, was the beacon the French sought. The Prince’s surcoat, quartered with the lions of England and lilies of France, was plain for all to see and he had fought this, his first engagement, with the wildness of youth abetting his strength. All the times his tutors had knocked him to the ground, with the King’s permission, in order to teach him the strike and parry blows of swordsmanship were now put to good use. But the moment would come when those in the French vanguard of the attacking force would fall on the front line and the weight of those following horsemen would thrust them into the flimsy ranks of defence that still held.

Blackstone could see only the powerful horses relentlessly coming on. The ground shuddered, clods of mud flew from their hooves; lances tilted, sword arms were held high, shields were feathered with arrows. How could men see through the narrow slits of the dog-faced bascinets? he wondered as he levelled a shaft at a knight wearing a surcoat of a red cross on a dark green background. They were shooting on a flatter trajectory now and the bodkins slammed through plate armour with a punch that knocked men out of their high-pommelled saddles. Somewhere in a place of safety, clerks would record the battle and they would write that in the minute it took the Duke of Alen?on and his knights to charge up the hill, more than sixteen thousand arrows fell on them. The French King’s brother did not survive to the summit.

Yet, still they did not falter.

Was this the courage and glory Sir Gilbert spoke of?

Blackstone watched as the survivors turned back to gather at the base of the hill. Behind them more French horsemen gathered. The survivors re-armed themselves, determined to return and seek the victory they confidently expected. Blackstone hawked and spat to try to rid his throat of the foul taste from the stench of disembowelled horses and men. He looked to his company of haggard men, the fear and strain of battle etched into their faces as if by a stonemason’s hand.

‘We bought the King this piece of France today, lads. Let’s keep it for him a while longer,’ he told them. He unstrung his bow and fitted another, not wanting to risk a loss of power from a weakened cord.

John Weston cupped a handful of water from the bucket before the boy ran down the line. ‘All I want is one rich-bastard knight to beg for surrender and his ransom’d buy the King as much bloody land as he wants. Then I wouldn’t have to be losing skin off my draw fingers. Look at that,’ he said, showing everyone his hand, ‘even skinned off the calluses.’

‘That’s ’cause you’ve spent half the fight scratching your arse,’ Will Longdon gibed.

The men laughed, glad of the distraction. Weston posed a pained expression. ‘Were it you what had a saddle-cracked arse like mine you’d soon moan,’ he said.

From across the valley evening mist crept slowly across the belly of the land. This late in August, nights brought a dampness and a chill that the soldiers would welcome from the day’s exertions and heat. Those who lived.

Blackstone looked to his brother. The boy lay on the wet ground sucking a piece of grass as if he were at home in the hay fields watching a rising meadow lark. Blackstone knelt by him.

‘What do you see?’ Blackstone asked gently, as he looked into the pink-streaked clouds. Soon it would be dark and then the fighting would make it even more difficult to separate friend from foe in close-quarter battle.

Richard looked back at him, unable to grasp what had been said, as Blackstone knew he wouldn’t. He shook his head when Richard grunted his lack of understanding. Blackstone knew he would never find that place again in his heart where his brother had once resided. He patted Richard’s shoulder and gestured him to his feet.

There was no time for further respite. An exultant fanfare floated across the valley. The kettledrums started their rousing tattoo once more.

Blackstone gazed across the broken bodies of men and horses, a pauper’s graveyard with bristling arrows for headstones. The English beheld a sight that caught their breath. Massed ranks of knights gathered. King Edward’s defence, four lines deep across nearly a thousand yards of hillside, was puny compared to the body of horsemen that now started their slow, determined walk. New blood had joined those who had already thrown themselves against the English. Banners fluttered, lifted by the evening’s breeze, and the colourful blaze of surcoats, shields and flags put the setting sun to shame.

‘Dear Christ,’ Will Longdon said and crossed himself.

‘We need more than arrows, Thomas,’ John Weston said. ‘We need a bloody miracle, and the Church and me have been strangers for as long as I can remember.’

Blackstone scanned the pennons. Over the weeks he had learnt to recognize some of the heraldic devices of the noble French houses. But he did not need to be an expert to notice de Harcourt’s coat of arms. Sir Godfrey’s brother and nephew were riding in the third wave. Blackstone glanced down the line to where the Prince’s retinue made themselves ready. The Prince pulled back a handful of his fair hair and settled the dark metalled helm on his head. He swung his sword arm, left and right, stretching out the muscles again from the momentary stiffness. As he turned to say something to the others his smile was plain to see for those watching. He was enjoying himself.

A few paces back from Richard FitzSimon, who held the Prince’s banner firmly with both hands, Godfrey de Harcourt stood stoically in a bloodstained surcoat next to Sir Reginald Cobham. The old fighter pressed a finger to his nostril and blew grimy snot onto the ground, then waited patiently for those who survived the impending hail of arrows. Killing was not something that tugged at his emotions. Feelings such as those he would leave to women. He knew that members of de Harcourt’s family were approaching to do battle. He felt no sympathy on behalf of the army’s marshal. The enemy needed to be killed as efficiently as possible – family or not.

‘All right, lads, form up,’ Blackstone told them, placing himself at the centre of his company. He put his arm on Richard’s shoulder and had him stand at his side. The boy smiled and then turned away. Blackstone almost called his name, but instead reached out with his bow and touched the boy’s back. ‘Here,’ he said, pointing at the ground next to his shoulder.

Richard shook his head. The guttural response and the gestures told Blackstone that his brother now thought himself a man and that he would fight with other men. Blackstone could have stopped him. Should have stopped him. But perhaps this was the time he had to let him go. Had not the King placed his son in harm’s way and expected him to do his duty?


Blackstone nodded, and the boy turned away to join the end of the archers’ defensive line. The others each raised an arm to touch his shoulder as he passed. It was a gesture of comradeship – or perhaps they did, after all, think him their talisman. As Blackstone turned his attention to the rising tide of French horsemen moving ever closer up the hill, he realized Sir Gilbert had been watching.

‘That’s the way it has to be, Thomas,’ he said. He tightened the blood knot on his sword and raised it above his head, then stepped in front of the army and faced the enemy. ‘Saint George!’ he bellowed.

The ranks roared, ‘Saint George!’ Then the cry flew along the lines and Blackstone saw the Prince and his nobles raise their swords. Saint George! Saint George! The mighty war cry swelled English hearts.

The front rank took a pace forward to stand level with Sir Gilbert.

There was no clearer message for the French King.

The English would not retreat.


There was no hot-blooded charge from the French knights this time, no death or glory gallop. Rows of horsemen gripped shields and lances, their knees touching those of the men next to them. A woman’s veil could not flutter through these formations without being impaled.

When they coolly urged their horses into the archers’ range, they lifted their shields to absorb the splattering hail. It was not enough. Arrows found their way through armour and horses’ flanks. Raised shields presented soft underarm targets. Plate armour could deflect an arrow but chain mail was pierced as if it were bare flesh. Rank upon rank kept coming, and once again the King’s beloved archers, the common men of England, slaughtered the great and good of European nobility. As man and horse fell, another from the following ranks took their place. This time the French could not be stopped. When the pain and heat for revenge took hold this time they pressed ahead with a surge of horse and armour.

And when they closed the front ranks it was Blackstone’s company’s turn to halt them. He yelled his commands. ‘Fifty paces! Thirty! Steady… nock… draw…’ He waited for another ten yards: ‘Loose!’

The whisper of sound fluttered the air followed by the crash of metal beating metal. Momentum carried the wounded war horses forward, as knights slumped, some trying to wrench the bodkin-pointed arrows from their armour. But ripped muscle, ligaments and shattered bone caused them to topple in agony. Within paces of the English line, the spearmen and men-at-arms stepped forward and began their killing. Hamstrung horses crumpled, their riders defenceless. Destriers rolled and crushed men, and the English did as their King had commanded. They gave no mercy.

And then, feet away from Blackstone, they almost broke through. The line caved in on itself, but, bolstered by men bravely pushing themselves forward, it held again. The few yards gained were seized back. Grunting men flung themselves at each other, trading blows until one gave way from fatigue or injury. They fought to the death. There was no question of yielding. The French knew they would live or die in this place because they could not retreat across the open ground and suffer again the archers’ lethal skill.

‘Stand your ground!’ Blackstone yelled to his men who had scurried back into the shelter of the Welsh spearmen who advanced into the mêlée. ‘Find a target! No matter how close!’ He loosed two arrows in quick succession, one taking a knight in the throat as Gruffydd ap Madoc speared the man’s horse. The falling creature’s weight yanked the spear from his hands and in the moment before he could pick up another, a second arrow had whispered past his ear into a knight swinging a two-handed battleaxe. The wild-eyed Welshman turned over his shoulder enough to see that it was Blackstone who had done the killing, then he lurched back into the fury. Polehammers smashed at the mounted knights, catching them across the shoulders or back of their heads, forcing their bodies forward in the saddle, exposing the unarmoured parts of thighs and buttocks. Then halberd spikes and spearheads were rammed into soft tissue, crippling the rider, leaving him to die beneath the sword strokes.

Knights and men-at-arms stood shoulder to shoulder. The shield wall for defence had changed little since Roman times. Edward, who had studied the battle lore of the fourth-century military author Vegetius, had used it often. But every wall can be broken, and now the sheer weight of those horsemen who survived the pit-traps and the arrows hammered at those who crouched below them.

‘Sword and spear! Together!’ Sir Gilbert’s command was heard down the line. His tireless fighting ability, despite old wounds, drew men to him, eager to fight at his side, knowing that they were next to a great soldier. As the knights came onto the line spearmen jabbed and probed at the stallions’ padded trappers, searching for the weak spots on the animals’ chests and flanks, pushing blades through the trappings until flesh gave and the beast reared in terror and pain. Then the swordsmen hacked and probed the Frenchmen’s armour. Crushing, piercing, blinding. Great men of power lay on the torn-up grass, squirming like stuck boars at a hunt.

The Prince was under heavy and bloody attack. Knights and infantrymen were down, men-at-arms hacked a pocket of resistance around him and the Prince wielded his sword with a dogged persistence that slaughtered those who threatened him. The Prince took the fight to his father’s enemies. Step by bloody step he moved a yard and then another as he wielded his sword against his attackers. Like most of the English knights he fought with his face-piece open, wanting to see the enemy clearly and to gasp the air so desperately needed. The threat from the crossbowmen had long been trampled beneath iron hooves. The dragon banner of the Prince’s own principality fluttered next to him as his standard bearer FitzSimon held fast against the surging attack. His was the more dangerous position. Next to the Prince he was unable to defend himself. The Welsh dragon must be kept aloft. The Prince was the prize and the French knew it. A surge of French knights on foot, tightly packed, fighting as a disciplined unit, cut their way closer to him.

Sir Gilbert saw it and led a flanking attack, taking a dozen men with him, fighting across crazed horses and slashing swords. The French nobles’ lives of privilege were being redeemed on that bloodied hill. Howling men fought with animal savagery. Cries of Montjoie! Saint Denis! rallied the French.

The line broke, re-formed and then broke again. Archers were down. In the mayhem Blackstone saw John Weston grappling with a French man-at-arms. Despite the man’s strength and the weight of his armour he struggled against the broad-shouldered archer, but Weston had nothing to grasp. His hands slithered on armour slippery with blood. He heard Weston scream as he went down.

‘Help me! Dear Christ! No!’

Blackstone had two arrows left and he fired into the attacking man without needing to aim. The arrow punched beneath the man’s raised sword arm. Weston rolled clear and scrambled on all fours trying to escape, but a second man rammed his sword into his back. John Weston spasmed, choking blood gushed, his arms twitched like a pinned insect. Blackstone had no chance to save him. There had been no clear shot. His men were dying. Dear God help us! he cried to himself.

‘Archers! Form up! Form up! Back! Back!’ He wanted them further up the hill so they could fire down into the French. Some heard his voice, turned, saw him signal them away from the marauding French, but it was too late. The unarmoured archers were already fighting. Arrows spent, it was knives and swords against plate armour.


Blackstone’s final arrow was nocked when he saw a moment of bewildering beauty. A swallow on the wing flew above the blood-sluiced men, lifting itself into the twilight’s haze to feed on insects, swooping across the pain and misery in its own uncaring beauty. In that moment Blackstone knew where he had seen such a bird before. It was not only embroidered on Christiana’s keepsake; it had been the emblem on the surcoat of the knight he had killed at the crossroads all those weeks ago. He had slain someone belonging to Christiana.

The realization was swept away as the bedlam of fighting rang in his ears. He loosed the arrow, which could not fail to find a target, but his men were scattered. Sir Gilbert was still fighting forward. Confusion swirled about him – but then Blackstone saw Richard.

His brother’s bow had been cast aside and he hammered a knight with a discarded poleaxe. The man’s visor collapsed under the bone-shattering blow. The hulking boy was thirty paces away. Blackstone jumped over two men in armour rolling on the hillside, each trying to get the better of the other. The mud and detritus of battle smeared their surcoats. The one shouted for St George, so Blackstone slashed at the other’s neck with his long knife. The man rolled free and, still calling on the English saint as if chanting a prayer, the Englishman finished the killing. Richard and a handful of men were hacking and smashing their way towards the beleaguered Prince, at whose side de Harcourt and others still fought tirelessly. Unknown to the lame baron his family’s banner lay trampled a hundred yards away, lying beneath his dead brother, killed by Elfred’s archers on the flank.

Blackstone felt every moment to be his last. His gasping lungs drove him through the turmoil as he raced towards his brother who, like the other men in the company, had no arrows left. Blackstone’s vision blurred. The edges of the battle were smears of colour and movement. His every sense was focused on his part of the fight, an area of less than a hundred paces. Welshmen thrust this way and that with halberds and knives, hamstringing and disembowelling horses and leaving their riders for the men-at-arms to dispatch.

And still the French came.

Will Longdon fought with his sword and a discarded shield. Tom, Matthew, all of them, they stood their ground as their King had asked.

But Thomas Blackstone ran.

The fear of God gripped him; squeezed his gasping lungs in terror; punished him for his cowardice in casting aside his love for his brother. God was going to take the mute boy back to His sacred heart.

Richard was about to die.

And that was why Thomas Blackstone ran.