Blood on the Sand (2 page)
Authors: Michael Jecks
Of course, there was no vintener called Berenger Fripper, and it is unlikely that one man was unfortunate enough to find himself in each of the battles depicted in this book. However, I have
tried to give a feel for what it would have been like to be an English archer fighting in these battles.
It’s been enormously enjoyable writing down the adventures of Fripper and his vintaine. I hope you get as much pleasure from reading their stories.
Michael Jecks
North Dartmoor
February 2015
Villeneuve-la-Hardie, outside Calais
There was a chill breeze coming off the sea as Berenger Fripper squatted on his haunches near the fire. It was dusk, and although the weather was dry enough now, it had been
spitting all day from clouds the colour of old steel. The sort of weather to make a man want to be home again, in a tavern with a roaring fire and a quart of good ale in his fist.
Yet the weather suited his grim mood.
His vintaine had changed much since they had set off from England. The long march to Crécy had taken its toll. Many of his original sixteen men had died. Jon, Gil, Luke, Will, even Geoff,
who had always seemed impervious to weapons. By the time they reached Crécy itself, most of his and another vintaine had been so badly mauled that there was scarcely enough to make one
understrength vintaine from the remnants of the two. Jack was still with him, and the boy Ed, nicknamed ‘the Donkey’.
Sadly, Clip had succeeded in whining his way here, although the day Clip died, Berenger would forswear ale and women and instead take up Holy Orders. The scrawny runt’s constant
complaining seemed to give him strength and vigour. When he stopped, the world would end.
Now he had new recruits, though Berenger eyed them without enthusiasm as they stood or knelt around the fire. He caught Jack’s eye and the two men grimaced. They were both professional
soldiers, and they knew how much work they had ahead of them to turn these into a fighting vintaine. At six-and-thirty, Berenger was feeling too old to start again. His thinning hair was already
showing more grey than brown. This lot would turn it all white.
They were a mixed bunch, it was certain.
Over to the left there was the bulk of Aletaster. He was almost as fat as Grandarse, their centener, with a belt that could have encompassed Berenger, Jack and the Donkey simultaneously with
ease. Red hair and small, dangerous blue eyes that never quite seemed to relax. Beside him sprawled the whey-faced, skinny little fellow the men had finally called Dogbreath, for the plainest of
reasons. He had a whining voice and the appearance of a cur that’s been kicked into abject submission; rather like Clip, but with more viciousness. There was the man they had named the Earl,
for his fair hair and affable demeanour, listening politely with an expression of amused bafflement as Jack Fletcher tried to explain a fighting manoeuvre.
And finally, there were the others. The scum that always floated below the top of Berenger’s pot of humanity when there was a little heat turned onto them: the fellows who wouldn’t
fit in, no matter what. Turf, so named for the colour of his face during the Channel crossing; Horn, the man who was almost as wide as he was tall, rather like a drinking horn; Pardoner, named not
for his untrustworthiness, but for his habit of apologising every few moments; Wren, who was so small and dainty, he could have been a maid; Saint Lawrence, who seemed too good and kind to be here.
Men wanted to stay near him. He carried himself like a priest, tall and elegant as an abbot, but with a certain anxiety, as though he constantly feared being exposed as an imposter.
What of it? Berenger thought to himself. They were all impostors here. That was why they were all content to be given a new nickname when they joined the vintaine. Whether they had arrived to
win money and renown, or to escape a demanding wife, debts, or a length of rope, they were all welcomed. Their King had need of them all.
And Berenger felt a surge of affection for them. He would live in their company, teaching them, helping them, and in the end, no doubt, burying many of them, if God didn’t call him
first.
These were
his
men. His archers.
English Channel, Seinte Gryfys, Late September 1346
On the day of their capture, Berenger Fripper wiped the salt spray from a face burned brown and leathery, and kicked the writhing figure at his feet.
‘Get up, Clip, you whining excuse for a man! I’ve seen better-looking turds in the midden. Get back on your damned feet.’
‘We’ll all be killed, ye mad bastard, Frip! Let me die in peace. Ach, you don’t understand. My head is a’ full of pain, man.’
‘You shouldn’t have gone thieving, then,’ Jack Fletcher said unsympathetically, aiming a kick of his own at the man’s scrawny backside.
‘I was trying to get hold of some food for you!’
‘You were seeing what you could thieve for your own benefit, more like,’ Berenger said.
‘You never complained when I brought you a squab or a barrel of ale, did you.’
‘We never had to go and search for you before,’ Jack said.
‘If you were real comrades, you’d have helped find the man and avenge this,’ Clip said bitterly.
Berenger was about to kick Clip again for the fun of it, when a sudden roll made him lose his balance. As he grabbed a rope, his belly clenched with the sudden need to puke.
Cog
, he thought with disgust. A rotten, stinking, leaking bucket, rather. The air about the deck was fetid with the stench from the bilges, and the only reason it was safe from fire was
that the whole vessel was so old that the timbers were themselves sodden. As the waves caught at her, she wallowed like a sow in mud. This wasn’t a fighting ship: she was about as much use as
a pastry bascinet. If the galley behind them caught up and accidentally rammed her, the hull would crumble like a dropped egg.
They were here on this godforsaken tub to help bring supplies. The last few ships heading for Villeneuve-la-Hardie, the vast English encampment outside Calais, had been attacked by the French or
their Genoese mercenaries, and someone had decided that it would be sensible to install archers on the fleets coming to supply the English.
Today Berenger’s men were on duty. Again. It made him wonder whether someone in his vintaine had offended a lord or some vindictive petty official. It was unreasonable that they kept being
given the shit duties.
He felt a man slam into him, hard, and almost let go of the rope.
‘Watch it!’ he snarled.
‘I’m sorry,’ Pardoner gulped, his own face blenched and greasy with incipient sea sickness. ‘I didn’t mean to . . .’
‘Shut up. Just keep hold of something. Hit me like that again, and I’ll be pushed over the rails.’
He shoved the raw recruit back towards the rails, where Pardoner soon joined two others, Turf and the Saint, in emptying his belly. Berenger knew that if he were to go too close to them, he
would soon be throwing up alongside them. The odour of vomit could do that to you.
A shipman hurried past, and three others were hauling on a rope as the shipmaster bellowed, his voice carrying clearly even over the howling and hissing of the wind. A fresh bout of nausea
burned deep in Berenger’s guts as another man barged into him.
‘Look where you’re going, Tyler,’ Berenger grunted. He clung to the wale as the cog bucked, rearing over a high wall of water. She hesitated at the summit, and then plunged
sickeningly, lurching to one side as she fell. Berenger was convinced the ship would continue to plummet, down and down, until she landed on the sea bed, but somehow she stopped at the trough and
flung him to the other side of the deck, as though, like a small dog, the cog wanted to shake herself dry.
There were twenty-five ships all told in this fleet. The first convoy were bearing fresh soldiers, food, clothing and boots for the men besieging Calais. Standing here, Berenger could see them
streaming away to the north and the south, a line of old cogs and fishing boats, all rolling and pitching in the grey seas. He wondered how many men were chucking their guts up on each of them.
Probably as many as on this ship, he thought.
The stench of vomit came to him and he had to turn and stare at the horizon to distract himself, cursing his luck once more. Sitting out here on this lump of floating crap, waiting for the wave
that would overwhelm them all, or for the first of the attacks that must surely come, he felt way out of his depth. God’s truth, it was enough to make you throw up.
He looked ahead. John of Essex was up there at the prow, holding on to a rope and moving with the ship like a shipmaster born at the base of a mast. Gritting his teeth, Berenger made his way in
stages to his side.
‘Hello, Frip. Isn’t this great?’ the man said enthusiastically.
Berenger disagreed. He saw ships yawing and pitching and felt his own stomach lurch in response. ‘Yes,’ he lied.
‘You know, I’ve always wanted excitement. Where I was born, my father never travelled further than five leagues from home. Did I tell you about him? He was a tanner, and a good one.
I could have followed him in that trade, but . . . well, have you ever smelled the tanneries?’ He made a face.
‘Once smelled, never forgotten,’ Berenger said.
‘That’s right. When you’ve got piss and dogshit all mixed up, and worked with it a while, spreading it over the skins . . . well, some men don’t mind it, but for me, soon
as I could, I ran away. I wanted
adventure
. I would never have got that back at home. I knew it would be different here.’
Berenger’s mind was fixed on the image of dogs turds and urine. He swallowed down his latest bout of nausea and said hollowly, ‘Adventure?’
His latest recruit gave a smile that made him look like a fox: cunning, but wary. ‘I want to be able to make some decent money, not to end up a mere cobbler or tranter about my old home,
without two farthings to rub together. One day, I’ll be important. You watch me. I could be a centener, a man-at-arms . . . even a knight.’
‘A knight?’ Berenger scoffed. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Why not? I’ve as much brain as most of them.’
‘You’re the son of a tanner, and you think you can get your hands on a knighthood?’