1356 (Special Edition)

Yet the prince knew his army was small. He had led six thousand men for two hundred and fifty miles, and now he was in the very centre of France, and France could assemble thousands of men to oppose him. Rumour said the King of France was gathering an army, but where, and how large, the prince did not know. But of one thing he could be certain: the army of King Jean would be larger than his army, and the reason he wanted Tours so badly was that this was the route by which he could join the smaller force of the Earl of Lancaster. Lancaster had marched out of Brittany to lay waste a swathe of land in northern France, and was now said to be coming south, hoping to join the prince, while the prince was working his way northwards, but to join Lancaster he needed to cross the Loire, and to cross the Loire he needed the bridge, and to take the bridge he needed to capture Tours. If the prince could join Lancaster he would command enough men to keep going north towards Paris, to ravage the enemy’s heartland and take on the French royal army, but if he could not cross the river then he would have no choice but to retreat.

The archers edged their way through the swamp. The rain seethed and the wind drove the water in quick wavelets. One man drew his bow and loosed an arrow at the bourg’s wooden palisade, but the bow’s string had been weakened by the rain and the arrow fell well short. ‘Don’t waste your bloody sticks!’ a ventenar, a man who led a score of archers, called angrily. ‘Wait till you can kill a bloody Frenchman.’

‘If there are any to kill,’ Burghersh said. No enemy showed on the bourg’s feeble defences. ‘Maybe the bastards really have gone?’ he added hopefully.

‘But why would he abandon the bourg?’ the prince asked.

‘Because he’s an idiot, sire?’ Burghersh suggested.

‘I’ve heard the dauphin’s ugly,’ the Prince said, ‘but no fool.’

‘Whereas you, sire?’ his other companion suggested, and Burghersh looked astonished at such insolence, but the prince laughed, enjoying the jest.

Some of the archers were using their bows as staffs, probing for firmer ground or else just balancing themselves. And still no enemy showed. One group of archers, closest to the river, found a strip of higher land that gave firm footing and they ran towards the pathetic wall beyond which were the rich houses and fat churches of Tours’s bourg. Other archers moved towards the same drier ground, and the men-at- arms, struggling through the floods and mud, followed them till there was a crowd of men on the slightly higher and drier land.

And the crossbows shot.

Dozens of crossbows, kept dry because their archers were in the upper floors of houses close to the wall. The bolts slashed through the rain, and the first archers were being thrown backwards by the force of the missiles. A couple of men tried to reply with their long war bows, but the damp strings had stretched and the arrows fell feebly short of the wooden wall that suddenly bristled with men holding axes, swords, and spears.

‘Jesus,’ the prince cursed.

‘Another fifty paces,’ Burghersh said, meaning that in another fifty yards his archers would be able to shoot into the bourg, but the crossbows were spitting quarrels too fast. The prince saw a man struck in the face, saw the blood misting sudden and almost immediately washed out of the air by the rain as the man fell back and splashed into the flood with a short black bolt protruding from an eye.

‘Call them back,’ the prince commanded.

‘But …’

‘Call them back!’

Burghersh shouted an order at his trumpeter who sounded the retreat. The wind and rain were loud, but not loud enough to drown the jeers of the defenders.

‘Sire! You’re too close!’ the prince’s companion insisted. He was Jean de Grailly, the Captal de Buch, a Gascon who had followed the prince from his lavish tent. ‘You’re too close, sire!’

‘There are four hundred men closer than I am,’ Edward said.

‘You’re wearing a red cloak, sire. It’s called a target.’ The captal spurred his own horse next to the prince’s. ‘Bastards,’ he spat. He was as young as the prince, a black-browed young man with intense dark eyes and, despite his youth, he had a formidable reputation as a leader of men. He had brought his own followers out of Gascony, all of them wearing his badge of five silver scallop shells on a black cross displayed against a field of gold. His horse wore the badge, and his cloak was striped black and yellow, making him as prominent a target as the prince. ‘If a bolt hits you, sire,’ he said, but did not finish the sentence because a bolt hissed close to his face, forcing him into an involuntary flinch.

Prince Edward was watching the archers and men-at-arms struggle back through the watery mud. ‘Sir Bartholomew!’ he called to Burghersh, who had ridden a few paces closer to the wading men.

‘Sire?’

‘The bastard who told you they’d retreated. Where is he?’

‘At my quarters, sire.’

‘Hang him. Hang him slowly. Make it very slow.’

A crossbow bolt struck the marshland just in front of Foudre and tumbled in a spray of water past the horse’s hooves. Two more missiles came close, but still the prince would not move. ‘They can’t see me running away,’ he told the captal.

‘Better to run away than die, sire.’

‘Not always,’ the prince said. ‘Reputation, my lord, reputation.’

‘Being dead before your time isn’t the way to great reputation,’ the captal said.

‘My time isn’t now,’ the prince said. ‘I had my fortune told in Argenton.’

‘You did?’

‘A filthy crone, she was, but folk said she sees the future. She smelled like a cesspit.’

‘And what did she say?’

‘She said I was destined for marvellous things,’ the prince said.

‘Did she know you were the Prince of Wales, sire?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Then she’d hardly say you were going to die in a mucky rainstorm a week later, would she? The better the fortune they give the better you pay them. And I’ll wager you were generous?’

‘I think I was, yes.’

‘And most likely one of your courtiers told the crone what to say. Did she say you’d be lucky in love?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘That’s an easy prophecy to give a prince. A prince can look like a toad and they’ll still spread their legs.’

‘God is indeed good,’ the prince said happily. Scarlet dye was leaking from his hat and making faint trickles on his face so that he looked as if he was bleeding.

‘Come away, sire,’ the captal pleaded.

‘In a moment, my lord,’ the prince said. He was determined to wait until the last Englishman or Welshman had retreated past his horse.

A crossbowman on the upper floor of a leather-worker’s house that lay close to the southern gate had seen the two horsemen’s rich cloaks. He wound the handles of his weapon, drawing the cord back inch by slow inch, tensioning the wood and metal bow that creaked as it took the enormous strain of the thick cord. He felt the cord click over the pawl that held it, then searched through his bolts to find one that looked sharp and clean. He laid it in the groove, then rested the weapon on the casement sill. He sighted it. He noted that the wind was gusting hard from left to right and so he edged the weapon slightly leftwards. He put the stock against his shoulder, took a breath and felt for the trigger with his right hand. He waited. The horsemen were not moving. The foot soldiers were fleeing, some were falling as the bolts struck through leather or mail to pierce bone and flesh, but the crossbowman ignored them. He sighted on the red cloak again, raised his aim very slightly to allow for the missile’s fall, steadied himself, held his breath, and pulled the trigger. The crossbow thumped into his shoulder as the bolt sped away, a black streak in the torrential silver rain.

‘Maybe the rain will stop tonight,’ the prince said wistfully.

The crossbow bolt went between his right thigh and the saddle. It cut the fine cloth of his hose without scratching his skin, it pierced the saddle’s thick leather, was slowed by the wooden frame and finally jarred against one of Foudre’s ribs. The horse whinnied and shied away from the pain. The prince calmed the stallion. ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘two inches higher and I’d be singing in the front row of the choir.’