the whole of his weight to bring the prow over to steerboard: away from the ships to our left, out of the midstream and towards the southern shore. The tiller creaked with the strain, and I only hoped it did not break. If that happened, we would have little choice but to fight.
‘Take the drum,’ the shipmaster said, nodding his head towards where it lay beside his ship-chest, down near my feet.
I picked it up. It was a large instrument, heavier than it looked, and I held it in the crook of my arm, as I had seen the shipmaster himself do.
‘What do we do?’ I asked. ‘Can we turn the ship around?’
‘By the time we’ve done that, they’ll be upon us for sure,’ Aubert said.
‘So we outrun them, then?’
‘We can try.’ He glanced towards me. His face had gone pale, and I saw the uncertainty in his eyes.
‘See to the ladies,’ I said to Wace. ‘Get them hidden; make sure they’re safe.’ I couldn’t have them exposed to arrows and spears and whatever else might come our way.
Wace nodded and hurried back towards the bow platform, where Elise and Beatrice stood, eyes wide in panic. But I would have to leave them to him, for just then a horn sounded from across the water, and I noticed two of the ships on the side nearest us turning, breaking away from the pack. Their oar-blades moved in unison, and their dragon-prows rose high as they skimmed over the black waters. They were not headed directly for us, but instead were moving to cut us off at the head of the next bend. Our only choice, then, was to make it there before they did, for otherwise we would be trapped with no hope of escape.
‘Come on, you whoresons,’ I shouted to our men as I began to beat out a steady rhythm on the drum. ‘Pull!’
Beneath my feet I felt the ship surge forward, rocking from side to side as it did so. Not all the rowers were pulling in time with my beat, and the waves made by their blades were crossing over each other, interfering with the next man’s stroke.
‘With me,’ I roared, feeling myself begin to sweat. ‘Listen!’ I struck the drumskin more loudly, slightly slower at first, just to get them all pulling together, but I did not want to lose too much speed, and as soon as I thought they were all in time I began to beat faster again.
I glanced at Aubert, but his gaze was fixed on the river ahead and I could see he was concentrating on our course. The river was gently curving to the right and he was trying to take us as close as he dared to the inside of that curve, to take the shortest line possible without running aground on the mudbanks which were now visible above the surface.
But the enemy were gaining speed now as they raced us towards the headland. Their vessels were smaller than ours, with roughly twenty oars to a side, but they were clearly lighter too, for they sat high above the waterline. A few hundred paces of open water still lay between us and safety.
‘Row, if you want to live!’ I said. ‘The English will not spare you; they will not show mercy. They are wildmen, animals, the Devil’s own children. They live only to kill Frenchmen like us!’
It seemed to work, for all of a sudden I sensed a fresh determination among the oarsmen, an extra burst of pace, and I responded in kind, speeding up my beat to take advantage of their renewed vigour.
‘Yes,’ I went on, starting to fall into a rhythm of my own, ‘they will kill you, but they will kill you slowly. They will cut out your tongue so you cannot scream; they will gouge out your eyes and sever your balls; and when they have finished, they will take their pleasure from your corpses.’
The mudbanks were now less than the
At the bow, Wace was lifting up planks, helping the ladies as they climbed down into the hold space below the deck. Eudo and the other knights were already donning hauberks and coifs, fastening scabbards to their belts. If it came to a fight, however, I knew we must surely lose; six knights could not hold them off for long. Of course there were a good number of Aubert’s crewmen, all of whom could probably handle a spear or a knife, but they were not trained warriors.
‘Pull!’ I shouted. ‘Pull, pull, pull!’
We were nearing the head of the bend now, and I could see that it was going to be far tighter than I imagined. For as quick as we were, the enemy were quicker still, and the gap we were aiming for was steadily narrowing with every stroke, with every heartbeat. Their drumbeats rang out louder than before, and even voices could be heard, jeering at us in what sounded like the English tongue, whooping with the delight of the chase. Weapons crashed against shields, raising the battle-thunder.
‘Come on, you bastards, harder!’
There was a sharp whistle of air to my left, and I looked up in time to see a flash of silver as an arrow hurtled our way, arcing down until it disappeared into the water not twenty paces off our larboard side. A second followed, landing amidst the waves left by our passage, then three all at once: black lines against the moonlit clouds, soaring over the river before bearing down upon us. Two fell short, but the third flew higher and I tensed, thinking for a moment that it was going to hit us, but a gust caught it and it flew over the heads of the oarsmen before dropping beyond the steerboard side, less than an oar’s length from the hull.
The distance was closing fast now; in the half-light I could even make out the faces of those aboard the other two ships. One had taken the lead, and its prow rose tall as it speared through the water towards us. Upon its deck a score and more of warriors, all dressed in mail and helmets, raised their blades to the sky in anticipation of the slaughter that was sure to come. A second volley of arrows shot towards us, and I had to duck as one shot just over my head, while another stuck fast in the gunwale not far from where I was standing. We had almost made it to the headland, almost made it past them. But still they did not give up, and as they came closer, I saw that they were no longer trying to block our escape. They were trying to ram us.
‘Faster,’ I yelled above the noise. The painted dragon-head of the leading ship bore down upon our flank and I braced myself for the impact. ‘Faster!’
A shudder ran through the ship as the deck tilted and the steerboard side jolted up. I stumbled sideways; the drum slipped from my fingers and thudded hollowly on to the deck. I was regaining my balance when the hull crashed down again, kicking up a white spray, and I fell back the other way. For a moment I thought the ship had been struck, and panic surged through me, but then I realised that we were still moving, and that the enemy were behind us.
I couldn’t help but let out a laugh as I saw the two English ships in our wake, desperately trying to turn about, to pursue us. They must have just missed us, for I could see no damage to the ship, but when I looked to steerboard I saw the mudbanks perilously close to the hull. That was what we must have struck, and in doing so we had come within a fraction of grounding.
‘Take us out,’ I shouted to Aubert.
The shipmaster shook his head and his lips moved, but above the rush of oars and the thumping of my heart, I couldn’t make out what it was he said.
‘Out, into the midstream!’ I said, but then I saw what he had in mind. Less than a mile ahead, the river curved in a great arc around to the right, and at the tip of that curve was an island, a great mound of trees and rocks, much larger than any of the islets we had seen so far, with two passages around it. The first and safest of these was to follow the main stream of the river, a long, wide route around the head of the bend. The other, shorter course, took the form of a narrow channel on the inside shore, between the island and the mudbanks — and it was towards this second passage that Aubert was steering us.
If they wanted to stay close on our tail, the enemy would have to follow us through that channel, for to go around would allow us to put open water between ourselves and them. In doing so, however, they too would run the same risk of beaching there on the flats. It was a plan that relied greatly on Aubert’s judgement and ability, but I did not see that we had many other choices. Already the two enemy ships had brought their prows around, carving through the dark waters, and were in pursuit. We still had a lead of several lengths on them, but they were much the faster, and I knew that lead could soon disappear. Already it seemed they were closing in again. We were far from being safe yet.
‘Row,’ I shouted, recovering the drum and starting to beat once more. I stepped along the middle gangplank between the men. ‘Row!’
Thrown from their rhythm by the impact, some of the oarsmen were struggling to keep their strokes in time,
