Then in October 1338 France again unleashes its fleet on English port towns. Southampton is burned. Guernsey is seized. The news reaches Antwerp at the same time as a letter from Oliver Ingham, the English seneschal in Gascony, begging for help against a French invasion.
Edward sends messengers to England to begin raising a real army.
And, as soon as the frosts of winter are over, he sends an earl over the border.
In April 1339 Montagu takes a quarter of their men-at-arms and twenty knights, including Harry and Sir Thomas. They follow the Scheldt river southwest to Ghent and then towards Tournai, just across the line into France. Once they reach Tournai, they will turn north and travel along that border, killing and burning their way towards Calais. It’s a cumbersome force, ill-suited to fast raiding in enemy territory. Instead, Montagu plans to intimidate the locals into giving up the mercenaries: each village will be asked for information, and if they don’t respond, the town and everyone in it will be destroyed.
The monotonous, flat fields of Flanders are finally relieved by low hills as they approach the border. Sparse stands of trees thicken into forest and Harry is grateful for the cover, glad to be out of the stark, endless visibility of the farmlands. The docile-looking barns and quiet farmsteads of the plains are not friendly to the English cause. Any of them could harbour enemy combatants ready to slip out under the cover of night and devastate an English camp. But at least it looks like enemy territory. The hilly lands they ride through now remind Harry heartbreakingly of home. He spends a day in turmoil, imagining men like them riding through Devonshire, burning and killing.
They cross the Scheldt at a little stone bridge late on their third afternoon, and then the small army makes camp at the edge of the elm forest just on the Flanders side of the border. Tomorrow, they ride into France. Tonight, their last night on neutral soil, they eat cold rations of cheese and hard bread and sausage, and turn in without fires. Harry sleeps in his mail. He learned that lesson in Scotland.
Their first mistake is assuming they are safe in Flanders.
Their second is assuming the mercenaries would fight like Englishmen.
The raiders slay the sentries with knife and bolt in the deepest pits of the night, when the moon has already begun her decline. Harry jolts awake to the sounds of screaming and the creak and twang of crossbows. He slams on his helmet, grabs his shield and sword, and unlaces his tent flap. His first instinct is to head for Montagu, because he has a feeling that is where the Black Knight, this Chevalier de la Mort, will be. But as he looks cautiously outside his tent, his military instincts take over. First, he has to secure the horses.
The camp is pandemonium. Montagu brought with him a score of longbowmen but their ranged weapons are useless in a packed, close-range night fight in a forest. Harry keeps his shield up and his head down and yells, ‘To the horses! To the horses!’ as he runs through the camp towards the lines. He speaks in English, hoping none of the raiders understand his language.
He ducks under a crossbow bolt and whirls, his sword coming up low and under the bowman’s short hauberk. Harry feels the wet suck of the blade hitting the man’s thigh bone and yanks hard, pulling it out. He runs on. There’s no point making sure the man is dead. If he can’t stand, he’s as good as gone, and with luck one of his friends will stop to aid him. Then Harry will have halted two raiders rather than just one.
A few men-at-arms from their camp stagger towards him, clutching weapons and shields, most still in their nightshirts. By the time they get to the horse lines there are two dozen of them, knights and spearmen and a few longbowmen, massed together. It’s enough to make them a hard target in a camp full of easy ones, and but for a few opportunistic shots from passing raiders with crossbows, they’re left alone.
Harry doesn’t hear the sound of hooves anywhere but from their own horses, fearful and restless in their lines. Inside, he’s panicking, because he knows the raiders’ mounted force is out there somewhere. But where? It makes his skin crawl, knowing that the main part of the attack hasn’t even happened yet, that any moment now will come the thunder of heavy armour riding them all down. The forest will slow them, but it’s an old forest, with tall trees and little undergrowth. Nothing to stop a mounted knight.
Harry throws a bridle on Nomad then jumps up on him, bareback, and once again yells, ‘To me! Rally to the horse lines!’ He orders the younger knights, all with fresh memories of squiring, to grab the remaining destriers and take the men-at-arms and head as a body back over the Scheldt bridge, deeper into Flanders. All Harry can do is send a quick prayer heavenwards that he’s not sending them to their death. It’s strange that the raiders hadn’t already cut loose the horses, or stolen them … unless they want the English to run.
Unless the bridge is a trap.
‘Ride back along the river!’ Harry calls, his guts twisting in panic as he remembers the little copse of trees on the Antwerp side of the bridge, and what perfect cover it would be to turn the crossing into a killing ground. ‘Don’t take the first bridge you come to.
