1356 (Special Edition)

war,

could cross that barrier in their sleep, except that the River Loire had overflowed its banks, and Tours was now protected by flooded fields, by farmland turned to marsh, and by thick mud. ‘Goddamned rain,’ the prince said again, and God answered with a peal of thunder so sudden and loud that every man in the tent flinched. A jagged sky-splitting lance of lightning slid down to the low hill on which the tent stood, making everything stark white and black for an instant, then a second crash of thunder echoed across the sky and, though it had seemed that it could not rain any harder, the intensity of the downpour was doubled. Rain bounced off the muddy ground, poured off the tent and made streams on the hill. ‘Jesus,’ the prince said, ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!’

‘Saint Martin has his ear, sire,’ one of his companions remarked.

‘Saint Martin?’

‘Patron saint of Tours, sire.’

‘Did he drown to death?’

‘I believe he died in his bed, sire, but I’m not sure.’

‘The bloody man bloody deserved to bloody drown if he sent this bloody rain.’

A horseman appeared at the foot of the hill. His horse was draped in a cloth showing a badge, but the cloth was so wet that the device could not be distinguished. The horse’s mane lay flat on its neck, dripping water. Its hooves slopped through the mud while the rider, who was wearing a mail hood beneath a bascinet, slumped in the saddle. He kicked the reluctant beast up the shallow slope and squinted towards the tent. ‘Is His Majesty there?’

‘That’s me!’ Edward called. ‘No, no, don’t dismount!’ The man had been about to get out of the saddle to kneel to the prince, but instead he just bowed. Rain bounced off his helmet.

‘I was sent to tell Your Majesty that we’re going to try again,’ the messenger shouted. He was only five paces away, but the rain was too loud for a normal voice.

‘You’re going to swim to the damned place?’ the prince called and waved to show he wanted no answer. ‘Tell him I’ll come!’ he shouted, then turned back into the tent and snapped his fingers towards a servant who waited in the shadows. ‘A cloak! A hat! Horse!’

Another crash of thunder deafened the world. Lightning stabbed onto the ruined church of Saint Lidoire, the remnants of which had been pulled apart to provide stone to repair the Cite’s walls. ‘Sire,’ one of the men at the gaming table called, ‘you needn’t go!’

‘If they’re attacking then they need to see me!’

‘You’ve no armour, sire!’

The prince ignored that, lifting his arms so a servant could attach the sword scabbard to the silver chains hanging from the belt. Another servant swathed Edward in a thick black cloak. ‘Not that one,’ the prince said, pushing the cloak away, ‘the red one! The one with gold fringes!’

‘The dye will run, sire.’

‘Damn the dye, they must see me. The red one! They need to recognise my pretty face. Give me that hat, the small one. Is a horse ready?’

‘Always, sire,’ a servant said.

‘Which horse is it?’

‘Foudre, sire.’

The prince laughed. ‘That’s bloody apt, eh? Foudre!’ Foudre was the French for lightning, and the prince, like his entourage, preferred to speak in French. It was only when he needed to speak with the common soldiers that he used English. He ran into the rain, cursing as he slipped on the wet grass. He steadied himself by grabbing the groom holding Foudre. ‘Help me up!’ He was already soaked through. ‘I’ll want dry clothes when I get back!’ he called to a servant inside the tent, then tugged on the reins.

‘Wait!’ someone shouted, but the prince was already spurring away, squinting because the rain was lashing into his eyes. The wind had risen, thrashing wet branches, and Foudre shied away from a low, heavy-leaved oak bough that shook in the gale. Lightning ripped across the sky, revealing the limestone bluffs beyond the river with a sudden brilliant white light and was followed a few seconds later by a crash of thunder that sounded as if the towers of heaven were collapsing.

‘You’re an idiot, sire!’ Another horseman had caught up with the prince, who was laughing.

‘I’m a wet idiot!’

‘We can’t attack in this!’

‘Maybe that’s what the bloody enemy thinks?’

The prince’s horse pounded across a waterlogged meadow towards a stand of willows where a mass of mailed men looked dark in the day’s gloom. The river was just beyond them, its wide surface made turbulent by the incessant rain. To the prince’s left, closest to the feeble defences of the bourg, but separated from them by a wide stretch of half-flooded marsh, were archers. They were wading north towards the town, but the prince noted none of them was drawing bows and loosing arrows. ‘Sir Bartholomew!’ he called as he ducked under a willow branch.

‘Bloody strings are wet,’ Sir Bartholomew Burghersh said without looking at him. He was a stocky, dark-faced man a little older than the prince, and a man noted for his violent hatred of all things French, except possibly for their wine, gold, and women. ‘Bloody strings are sopping wet. Might as well spit at the bastards rather than loose arrows. Let’s go!’

The mass of mailed men-at-arms trudged north behind the archers, who, because their bowstrings were soaked, could not shoot at anything near to their usual range. ‘Why are the bowmen out there?’ the prince called.

‘A fellow slipped into our lines and said the bastards had pulled back into the Cite,’ Burghersh said. His men- at-arms, all on foot and carrying shields, swords and axes, were struggling through the soggy ground and into the face of the rain-drenched gale. The wind was so strong that it was making waves on the flood water; there were even whitecaps. The prince spurred behind the men-at-arms, staring into the tempest and wondering if it could be true that the enemy had abandoned the bourg. He hoped so. His army was bivouacked on what higher ground they could find. A few lucky men had cottages or hovels for shelter, a handful possessed tents, but most had to put together a shelter from branches, leaves, and turf. The bourg could shelter all his men till this wretched weather relented.

Sir Bartholomew, mounted on a fine destrier, rode alongside the prince. ‘Some of the bows will shoot, sire,’ he said, somewhat nervously.

‘Are you sure of your fellow? The one who said the bastards had fled?’

‘He seemed very certain, sire. He claimed the Count of Poitou ordered every defender into the Cite.’

‘So the puppy Charles is here, is he?’ the prince said. Charles was the eighteen-year-old dauphin, heir to King Jean of France. ‘The boy made a quick march from Bourges, didn’t he? And he’s just going to let us take the town?’ The prince peered through the rain. ‘His banners are still on the wall,’ he added dubiously. The feeble defences of the bourg were hung with banners, though it was hard to distinguish what they displayed because the rain had smeared the dyes in the cloth, but there were saints and fleurs-de-lys, and the presence of the flags suggested the defenders were still behind their palisade.

‘They want us to think they’re still in the bourg, sire,’ Burghersh said.

‘And I want this town,’ the prince said.

He had led six thousand men out of Gascony, and they had burned towns, captured castles, razed farms, and slaughtered livestock. They had captured noble prisoners whose ransoms would defray half the cost of the war, indeed they had taken so much plunder that the men could not carry all they had stolen. From the treasury at Saint-Benoit-du-Sault alone they had taken no less than fourteen thousand golden ecus, each worth three English silver shillings. Over two thousand pounds in good French gold! They had met almost no resistance. The great castle at Romorantin had held out for a couple of days, but when the fire arrows of the prince’s archers had succeeded in setting fire to the roof of the great keep, the garrison had stumbled out, escaping the falling rafters that were collapsing in spectacular gouts of flame. A priest in the prince’s household reckoned the army had covered two hundred and fifty miles so far, and it had been two hundred and fifty miles of plunder and destruction and pillage and killing, two hundred and fifty miles of impoverishing the French and showing that England could march with impunity throughout the enemy’s land.