off to reach the English lines. They could not run, with the heavy mantlets being wheeled along with them. Those who rushed in had paid for it in battles of the past. Instead, they had to walk the last eighth of a mile, knowing all the time that they were in range.
William raised his hand and dropped it suddenly, answered by thousands of arrows soaring out as one, then again and again. He had never lost his awe at the accuracy of men who trained for twenty years at their craft. He knew they were despised by his armoured knights, seen as men who killed like cowards. Yet those bowmen gave as much of their lives to building skill and strength as any professional soldier. Welsh and English in the main, with a few Scots and Irish sprinkled among them, they could aim and strike a man down at four hundred yards. There was nothing in the world like them and William felt a rush of joy as the crossbowmen began to fall.
The mantlets protected many of the enemy, creeping ever closer in their columns. The longbows shot over the wooden shields, letting their arrows drop on to the bunched men behind, a hundred shafts at a time, spearing into the packed ranks. William could hear screaming and he saw a ripple go through the French cavalry. There were proud men there, knights and noble lords unwilling to see the hated English archers wreaking havoc.
‘Let them charge,’ William whispered to himself. He had seen it before, as knights driven to frenzy tried to face down the arrow storm. They knew fear against the rushing, whining shafts — and they were men who reacted to fear with rage.
‘Please,’ William whispered again. ‘Jesus and St Sebastian, let them charge.’
The devil’s hand had been passed and the crossbowmen had forced their mantlets close enough to form up and reply. For the first time, the air filled with black bolts, no longer than a man’s finger but deadly. All along the English line, shields were raised and locked together. The sound of the bolts striking was like hail, a roaring rattle that claimed men in the gaps, so that they cried out.
William raised his own shield, though he knew the iron bolts would not pierce his armour beyond the luckiest of shots. He had seen battles where the exchange of bolts and arrows could go on for days before the armies met, but he was counting on the French confidence in superior numbers. He was sure there were already voices calling for a sudden attack, beseeching the French king to let them catch his archers by surprise. He had planned for it.
White, goose-feathered shafts stood out like a mat of some strange weed around the French mantlets. The crossbowmen had suffered for their lack of accuracy and power. Hundreds of them were down, or limping back through their lines with terrible wounds. William saw the ripple pass through the French knights yet again as they shuffled forward, the horses stamping and snorting.
He shouted the order he had discussed with Baron Alton. It was passed on to the archers, who looked predictably scornful. Some of them spat on the ground in his direction, but William didn’t care what they thought of the tactic, as long as they obeyed.
As the next volley of iron bolts came over, hundreds of archers dropped flat, as if they had been struck. A great cheer went up from the crossbowmen and it was answered by their centre. William’s heart raced as he saw the knights kick in and canter down the middle, ignoring all orders to halt in their delight at seeing archers in disarray. They had a vast and overwhelming advantage in numbers and they fought with their king on the field, determined to impress him and make their names.
William waited as they came in, waited while his heart thumped, until they were fully committed and within the range of the bows. Despite their misgivings, his archers were enjoying the subterfuge, sending a few desultory arrows out as if the great storm had been reduced to nothing.
‘Wait! Hold!’ William roared.
The men lying on the ground were smiling like idiots, he could see them. Baron Alton wore a savage expression, his eyes wide as he watched William for the order.
‘Up! Archers up!’ William shouted.
He watched as the ‘dead’ men leaped to their feet and slotted new arrows on to the bows. The French charge could not turn by then. It could not halt. The knights had passed the mantlets, streaming around them in their desire to close and slaughter the enemy. They had swallowed up their own crossbow positions, just as they had once done at Crécy. William clenched his mailed fist, making the metal and leather creak.
The charging knights were staring ahead at the massed swordsmen facing them. Those men-at-arms raised their weapons, jeering and gesturing for them to come on. With a rippling crack, hundreds of arrows were loosed from the wing, cutting through the French with buzzing terror.
The first few ranks crumpled, collapsing as the closest men and horses were struck over and over. It was as if a blackened twine had been stretched across a lonely road, with the French knights the ones who caught it in the throat. They died in droves until the rising mass of broken men and corpses forced the charge to a furious halt.
William called an order and the entire centre of his army moved in. He rode with the sword and axemen, weapons raised to kill as they ran as fast as they could. They reached the lines of the dead in a hundred heartbeats, clambering over still-kicking horses and into the crush of mounted knights behind them. All the time, the arrows soared over their heads, killing men who never even saw what hit them.
William watched as a group of burly English axemen cut their way into a dozen knights, hammering them from their saddles. The great advantage of a horse was its speed and agility, but the lines had compressed and the French knights could hardly move to fight back.
William saw lances thrown away in disgust and swords drawn to hack down as the roaring English butchers killed their way deeper into the French lines. He exulted at the damage they were doing, but from the height of his own saddle, he could see further than the men on the ground. As he looked up, his heart sank. The brutal action had not touched the bulk of the French army. They were shifting and moving under new orders to come round and hit his flanks. There were so many of them! It made his triumphant ruse and sudden attack look no more dangerous than a minor skirmish.
He turned to the messengers running at his side.
‘Find Baron Alton and give him my regards. Tell him I would appreciate our mounted knights being used to prevent the enemy horse flanking us.’
One of them raced off and time seemed to stand still for William while his men hacked and killed for him. He waited for Alton to respond. The French cavalry were pulling back at last from the impossible crush of the centre. William could see fresh pike regiments marching stolidly in to where the killing was going on. It was an impressive manoeuvre under pressure and he assumed the order for it had come from the king himself, the only man on that field with the authority to order his knights to withdraw.
The English sword line surged forward, killing anyone they could reach. They’d gone too far for support from the archers by then and it was that which made William hesitate. His men-at-arms had pushed on into a long column of their own while pursuing the enemy. They were not only exposed along the flanks, but in real danger of being cut off. He looked into the distance again and shook his head at the numbers still untouched by the battle. He had hoped against hope for a rout, to fold the French lines into themselves in the sudden terror of the attack. It had not happened and he knew he should fall back. Yet Alton’s heavy cavalry was moving up on the wings, and when he glanced behind, he saw hundreds of archers stalking forward, trying to keep up with the moving battlefront, where they could still do damage.
William found himself sweating. He was still vastly outnumbered, but moving forward at a good pace against enemy pike regiments. Those cruel weapons were nearly impossible to charge with cavalry, but his sword and axemen would literally go through them, dodging past the outer points and then wreaking havoc on the untrained men holding the long weapons. He knew he should pull back in good order, but not yet, not quite yet.
The ranks of pikemen lowered the heavy iron heads and broke into a charge of their own, a line of sharp metal and pounding feet that was terrifying to stand against. The English men-at-arms readied their shields, knowing they had to turn the closest pike-head with a blade and then slip in with a straight thrust to kill the wielder. It was a difficult move to pull off with hearts racing and hands slippery from sweat and blood. Many of them missed the deft touch and were impaled, the heavy pikes driven as much by the running men behind as those who held them. Hundreds more slipped the pikes and stabbed past, but the rush and press was so great that they too were swallowed, knocked off their feet by the weight of the charge. William cursed aloud, calling for his men to fall back and re-form. He turned his mount and trotted a hundred paces to the rear before facing the enemy again. Still they came on, roaring in excitement despite their losses.
‘Archers!’ William shouted, hoping to God that they could hear him over the noise of the battle.
