Blood on the Sand (7 page)

‘My lord Count, my lord Cardinal,’ Jean de Vervins said strongly, ‘surely you would be better served to wait until the King has heard the Genoese’s request? It will not
harm your case to offer a period for reflection. Then, when the King has made known his view, you can be assured of not going against his will. I would—’

‘You are no longer in favour, Sieur Jean. These peasants are my prisoners to do with as I will. I would not delay their execution even if they were lords and eligible for ransom. No! I
will see them die and let all the English know that this is what they can expect!’

Berenger felt a flash of anger on hearing this, and he tried to step forward, but a lance-butt struck his belly and he fell back, gasping. His fear left him as he clutched his belly, glaring at
the guard who had hit him. He had an urge to spring and hit the man, but before he could act, two Frenchmen behind him had set their swords to him.

‘Him and him,’ the man-at-arms said, languidly indicating the young, fair-haired sailor who had wept to see his ship sink, and another, older mariner. The two were separated from the
rest by lances and clubs. ‘These we shall hang now. As for the rest, take them to the dungeons. When we have time, we shall see to them.’

The younger shipman began to wail on hearing this. Crying out as he saw the others being led back the way they had come, but Berenger had no time to spare for his panic. His own mind was working
doubly quickly. There must be some means of escape from here, if he could but find it.

Béatrice felt a violent stabbing pain just below her ribcage, as though her inner being had fractured. ‘Did none escape?’ she said hoarsely.

‘They were taken, all of them. Some were slain and thrown from the boat,’ Ed said. ‘I don’t know who.’

‘What will they do?’ Béatrice asked Archibald.

He grimaced and said heavily, ‘What would any leader do to men such as these? Kill them at once. Hack off their heads so they’ll pose no risk in the future. Or, if he wants to make a
point, he could mutilate them and set them free to live forever as a reminder of French revenge.’

‘No! You don’t really think they would do that?’ Béatrice wailed. To think that Berenger could be dead or scarred for life was appalling.

Archibald looked at her. His face was torn by grief. ‘I know it’s foul, maid, but that’s the way of things. God willing, they will return. If they don’t, He chose to
punish them and we will need to say prayers for them. But there is nothing more we can do.’

‘You just don’t care! You are a
callous
old man!’ she said, and turned and ran from his camp, leaving Archibald surprised and Ed gaping.

Still weeping, Béatrice ran along the main road towards the town, and then out to the English harbour to the east.

There was a constant shouting, the rumble of great rocks being rolled into the slings of the vast wooden siege machines, and the occasional slither and crack as an engine was released. When that
happened, the mighty weight of rock in the counterbalance suddenly jerked downwards, sending the sling-arm up into the air and freeing the rock from its sling, to hurtle through the sky and pound
at the walls or buildings of the town.

She had no eyes for that. Her attention was fixed on the sea that was visible from here. The water was filled with galleys and cogs of all shapes and sizes, but there was no sign of their ship
and nothing to show what had happened to Berenger and his men. They had disappeared as effectively as if the sea had swallowed them up.

‘Out of the way, you silly bitch!’ a stevedore shouted at her, trundling a heavy cart.

She was blocking the only path from the stores to the ships, she realised, but she still spat a pithy curse at him before turning and marching away.

It was strange to feel this desolation about the vintener and his men. She had hardly known them any time, and most of them were not the kind of people she would have looked at before the recent
catastrophes . . . but since the disaster of her father’s arrest and execution, and then her persecution by the local villagers, she had grown more and more dependent on Berenger Fripper and
his men. She had come to respect them – almost to trust them.

And now they were taken, swept away from her as effectively as the figures on a chessboard, hurled from their places by an angry, Godlike hand. Their disappearance served only to highlight her
own loneliness and despair.

Seeing another man bearing down on her, carrying a heavy bale of cloth on his head and already beginning to swear, she turned and slowly tramped along the road.

She had no idea where she was going. Her feet bore her away from the harbour and the ships, and out towards the west, where the heights of Sangatte loomed. The road took her over a little
bridge, and past the reeds that marked the marshes. All the land about here was boggy. She hated it. It reeked of putrefying vegetation. Yet it had one advantage: no army could pass on this stretch
of land. Only the two roads, one heading south, the other holding to the coast, could take much traffic. It was a miracle that the town itself had been constructed. Where had they found the stone
for the walls – and who could have realised that this was the one site where they could build? Waves crashed at the shore to her right, and she stared out to sea again, wondering how her
friends of the vintaine fared. They could already be dead.

The sound of approaching hooves stirred her from her reverie in time to see a small company of horsemen led by a knight. She looked up into a face that could have been carved from the same stone
as the walls that protected Calais. It was the face of a man who could happily exterminate a whole race, if there were profit in it.

Only a few weeks ago she had felt the same. She could gladly have seen all her own countrymen executed, for their deliberate killing of her father, and for the way that she herself had been
harried and threatened with rape. Yet now she was coming to feel sympathy for the people who lived about here. They struggled and strove like many others, but they were forced to suffer the
depredations of men such as this: a knight with no compassion. Men like this were worse than the bestial men-at-arms who slew for pleasure: men of this sort had no pleasure in their souls –
possibly no feelings at all.

She had heard of this man before. Sir Peter of Bromley, once Sir Pierre d’Agen, was a knight banneret in the pay of the English King. Once he had been known as a most honoured knight in
the service of King Philippe of France, but he had fallen out of favour, and had come to serve the English against his own King.

It was said that Sir Peter’s heart was made of steel as hard and unbending as his helm. He exulted in killing not because he held any particular hatred for his opponent, but because he saw
death as efficient. There was no sympathy in him for his victims, only the constant urge to wage war effectively for his new master. And if that meant peasants must die, so be it.

He glanced at her, and as his eyes raked her body, she shuddered. It was like being licked by snakes.

She was tempted to keep walking. To leave this camp, as Archibald had intimated – but if she were to leave, where could she go? She had no friends, no family, no nation.

She was lost.

Berenger would never forget the screams of that young sailor as he was dragged away. His companion uttered a few choice curses, mentioning the parentage of the man-at-arms and
others as he went, but he was at least able to walk. The other was beshitten before he was out of the door.

‘I swore that these men, and those sailors, would all be safe,’ Chrestien de Grimault said again.

His voice was quiet, but Berenger could hear the anger bubbling. He looked at the Genoese with sudden interest.

‘You overplayed your authority, then,’ the Comte de Roucy said flatly. ‘You had no right to offer any terms. These are pirates and will be treated as such.’

‘Count, I would not have men think I would go back on my word!’

‘Then, as I said, in future be more careful about what you promise.’

The Cardinal chuckled. ‘Of course, if you are nervous about what they might think of your honour, they will soon have other things to occupy their minds.’

As he spoke, Berenger saw Jean de Vervins’ eyes pass over the prisoners. When those eyes turned to him, Berenger felt an overwhelming hatred and loathing fill him. There was no feeling in
the Frenchman’s eyes, he thought. No compassion, no emotion of any sort. He might have been peering at a turd on the street. And then Berenger saw a sudden flicker. It was tiny – a
twitch almost – and yet Berenger could have sworn that the man was winking at him. The moment passed, Jean de Vervins’ gaze moved on, and Berenger was left standing bewildered,
wondering whether he had seen that or merely imagined it.

Chrestien de Grimault laughed lightly. ‘So you are saying that my promise will be ignored, then? That is good. A man likes to know how he stands. You will happily leave me to be
dishonoured?’

‘Your honour is your concern,’ the Count said. Then he turned and stared at the shipman, and his voice became low, malevolent. ‘If you Genoese had fought better at
Crécy, perhaps we would not now be fighting the English. We would have driven them – and these men – into the sea. So the cowardice of your compatriots has left us in this sorry
condition, and these English archers are only alive because of them.’

‘My compatriots fought bravely, until they were slaughtered by fools who knew little about warfare and less about their allies,’ Chrestien de Grimault said tightly. ‘They could
not fight the English with their bows, because the strings were wetted by the rain, while the English were killing them with thousands of arrows at every step. And their reward for running this
terrible risk? They were repaid by your knights slaughtering them and trampling their bodies into the mud!’

The Count climbed to his feet and hissed, ‘You dare speak of them in the same breath as those brave knights? I should teach you the meaning of honour and dignity at the point of my
sword!’

‘I would be happy to comply. My brave Genoese metal can show you the meaning of—’

‘Enough! Count, Master Grimault! This matter is closed,’ the Cardinal snapped. ‘The battle is over, and there is nothing we can do now to bring back the poor dead souls from
the field. Take these prisoners away. We shall see to them when we have erected a suitable structure on which to punish them.’

Berenger and the others found themselves being shoved unceremoniously towards the door through which the two sailors had recently been taken. The door gave out onto a staircase of stone, which
led down to a paved yard. Pushed and beaten, they were forced towards a gateway in the encircling wall. From here they could see the church and, before it, a large tree. As they were taken out,
they saw two men throwing ropes up to where a boy had climbed onto a strong branch. He caught the ropes and passed them over two projecting limbs of the tree, letting the other ends fall to the
ground. Enthusiastic townspeople took hold of them.

The young sailor was gibbering, kneeling and pleading with his hands clasped, while his companion glared at him with contempt. As Berenger and the others approached, their guards stopped so that
they could enjoy the spectacle.

Ignoring the weeping, petrified sailor, men grabbed the other man and set the rope about his throat. Then four men hauled him up into the air. His legs kicking wildly, eyes bulging, the sailor
slowly throttled, trying with every jerk and lunge of his legs to snap his own neck and bring about a quicker end. But he could not. He was still thrashing, ever more feebly, as the French, joking
with each other, tied the second rope about the kneeling man and lifted him still higher, laughing and running away as the man’s legs flicked ordure over the crowds with each spasmodic
kick.

At the sight Berenger felt sick in his belly. This was not justice, but from the gleeful response of the crowds, he knew that he could expect nothing better when it was his turn to stand on a
platform and be blinded and crippled with the others. There would be no sympathy here for the men who had inspired so much fear and loathing throughout France.

A blow in the small of his back almost drove him to his knees, but he stumbled onwards, his thoughts directed at escape.

‘Not here, my friend.’

He looked around and found himself staring at Jean de Vervins. ‘What?’

‘You will have no easy escape here.’

Berenger had the unpleasant certainty that this man had read his mind. ‘Who are you?’

‘Me? A mere country-living knight, used to life far from the King’s court,’ Jean de Vervins said with a quiet melancholy. ‘I am nothing. But you: you think you can drive
a path through all these guards? No, for that you will need a miracle, yes?’ Jean smiled sadly, turned, and was gone.

‘A miracle,’ Berenger said to himself. ‘That’s all. Just a fucking miracle.’

Sir John de Sully was standing eating his lunch when the gynour appeared in his doorway. Like his archers, Sir John had no chair, only a worn three-legged stool filched from a
house on their march, although he was five-and-sixty years old, and had enough wounds to prove that he had never run from a battle.