Ed would never forget that morning. Before that day he had been a child, only seven years old; afterwards he was a man. He would have a new purpose. That day set the seal on his future and gave him a target: a red, raw determination of death and pain for the man who killed his people.
‘Get a move on, boy!’
Ed grabbed a handful of the netting and threw it over his shoulder as old Gil the Ropeman lazily flicked a rope’s end towards his backside. From bitter experience, Ed knew how much that could sting when it connected, and the boy arched his back protectively, then scooped up more of the netting to his chest, and scampered off, laughing.
‘And hurry back this time!’ Gil bellowed as the boy darted through the doorway and out into the sunshine.
It was a day to remember. The sun was beating down on the stones here at the rough beach near the castle, and Ed paused as he let the netting slide from his shoulders, a small boy with tousled, mousy hair cut short over his ears.
There was a sharp pain at the back of his head, and he turned to see a group of older boys laughing at him. One picked up another stone and threw it at him.
‘Stop it!’ he shouted.
‘Make me!’ the boy jeered, and flung another pebble.
Ed ducked and continued on his way. Hal always attacked him. He was a tall boy for his age, and he liked to beat up smaller boys, especially when they were defenceless. Around him his little tribe of supporters joined in, heckling and jeering, all of them glad that they weren’t the focus of Hal’s bile today. But they never were when Ed was around. Hal always picked on him. It wasn’t fair.
He made his way down the beach, trailing some of the netting, and passed it to the fisherman there.
‘They bully you?’ It was Simon, a younger sailor. He was bare-chested in the sunshine, his face and torso brown as a walnut, and when Ed nodded he scowled. ‘Bastard lurdens! I’ll thrash Hal’s arse for him later.’
Ed didn’t speak as Simon hooked the net over the wooden stand, eyeing the repairs with a knowing frown. The ropes at either end had frayed and worn, and Gil had replaced a length, splicing it expertly so that the repair was scarcely visible.
‘You ought to fight back, Ed.’
Ed glanced back towards the older boys. Hal was a good six inches taller than him, and his shoulders were broad and powerful. He was four years older than Ed, and the thought of attacking him was shocking. Worse still was the thought that Simon could avenge him in an act of misplaced kindness. Simon was Hal’s brother, and if Simon was to beat Hal, Ed knew Hal would want to take it out on him again. He’d prefer Hal was left alone. Even as he peered at
them, he saw Hal bite his thumb at him.
Rather than respond, Ed looked away. He found himself staring out to sea, and the sight was soothing. He loved the water. It was in his blood. The son of a fisherman always looked first to the water, his father had once told him. Peter, his father, was a short, wiry man with skin the colour of old oak. His hands were horny and callused from long years pulling at ropes and oars,
one arm twisted from where an accident had broken the bone. Although it had set, it was crooked from then on. Not that it mattered. To Ed the only thing he saw was his eyes. They weren’t kind like Ed’s mother’s, but they were calm and understanding. He seemed to respect Ed rather than love him, much in the same way that he admired the family’s old hound. So long as both behaved and obeyed when they were told, Peter was content.
‘Looking for your father? He’s over there,’ Simon said, pointing.
On the water the little fishing craft were bobbing on the swell out in the river. The sun glinted on the river all about them, making the wave-caps sparkle like tiny diamonds on a gently rippling blue silk. The morning’s mist had all but disappeared, and now it lay down at the mouth of the river like a pale grey cushion, its top and base curiously well-defined. He didn’t recall seeing a mist like that before.
He thought he could see his father. He was out on a long, low boat with his brother and their friends. Five men, all working hard, and yet his father found time to stop. Ed thought he might be about to wave to him, but then realised he was staring out towards the mist as though perturbed by something. A sound, or a premonition. The men returned to their labours. There was no time for wool-gathering on a boat.
Nor on land.
On hearing Gil’s hoarse bellow, Ed was startled from his reverie. He turned to hurry back to the rope shed. There was no sign of Hal and his companions, and Ed found himself hoping that he might return without capture. The thought of Gil’s homely old face was the most appealing sight he could conjure up just now, and he hurried up the sandy track, past the fish salting sheds, and along the narrow path. There was a wall on one side, bare rocks on the other, with a gap between the stone where a mason had carved a hollow for shelter, and it was here, as he turned behind the next shed, that he heard the hated voice again.
‘Hello, little Ed,’ Hal said.
He didn’t stop to look, but made to flee, too late. Already a hand had grabbed his shoulder, another his leg, and he tumbled to earth. Unable to break his fall, his chin struck the ground with a crunch and he felt a tooth snap, while a stone caught his temple and left him stunned and blinking.
‘Asking my brother to help you, were you?’ Hal sneered, and Ed turned his head to stare up at him with bleary eyes. ‘Maybe you’ll need to ask him to help with this, too, eh? And this!’
With each question he kicked Ed’s belly and, as Ed curled into a ball, his friends joined in like scavengers following after the leader of the pack. They closed in so close the sun’s light was blocked. He felt as though he was enfolded in the gloom of twilight. Blows thudding, their irregular pounding creating a cacophony in his head that stopped hurting, and instead became a
dull aching that spread over his entire body. It spread, a dreary awareness of bruising and pain to come. A high, keening sound came to his ears, and he realised it was his own voice.
And then he heard a crack and a sharp scream.
The kicking stopped. All around him he heard a whirling noise, slapping, and shrieks of pain and protest. Suddenly there was more light about him: the darkness was clearer, and he dimly recognised a fresh voice and sounds of pain.
When he opened his eyes, he found Gil standing over him, wielding his rope’s end with vigour. Most of his enemies had already fled, but Hal and one other were trapped in the niche in the wall, and were receiving the brunt of Gil’s rage.
‘You’d hound a boy like him? A fellow half your size? You cowardly sons of the devil, God rot your cods!’
Ed was weeping as he pushed himself up on his hands and knees, and then pressed himself backwards so that he was leaning on his elbows, slumped against a shed’s wall.
Hal pulled out his knife, shouting, ‘Leave us, you old bastard!’, but Gil swept across and down with his rope, and the knife was hurled away as Hal yelped, the heavy rope striking his wrist.
‘Pull a knife on me, would ye?’ Gil bawled, spittle flying from his face, and he moved forward with his rope held high.
Before he could reach them, the two sprang forward and past him. The rope’s end fell, hard, and smacked someone on the back, making him shriek, and then they were gone, and Gil turned, his face purple with rage, panting. And then he stopped, and his mouth fell wide. ‘Sweet Jesus!’
*
The mist was like a thick fustian blanket in which only the sound of the waves slapping against the side of the galley could be heard, and Arnaud leaned forward, his fist clenched about a stay as he peered into the gloom, legs rocking naturally with the movement of the ship, feeling her rear and plunge gently. He could feel her movements in his belly, an almost-tingling below his ribs, the precursor to a fight. He recognised his own excitement in that sensation as though he was picking up the ship’s own mood. She was to him like a knight’s charger to the knight. All ships had their own tempers, and he, a master shipman, could feel hers. He knew this craft better than anyone. It was like a patient, reliable rounsey: sleek and fast, and deadly in battle. But today, in this damned fog, he felt that he was commanding it to commit suicide, because sailing blind was a route to an early grave.
A frown of lingering intensity fixed to his face, Arnaud concentrated on the sounds ahead.
No slap and hiss of water on rocks yet, he noted, but that didn’t mean that there was nothing under the waves to rip out her keel. It was all deeply alarming.
Arnaud, the son of a shipwright, was slim and short. A mop of dark hair gave him the appearance of youth and, because he wasn’t tall and possessed a slender, wiry frame, he looked younger than his twenty-three years. It had been a cause of amusement to his friends when he was younger and less able to defend himself, and he had often been the butt for others’ entertainment. Now, as a commander of a galley, few were foolish enough to try their luck.
Catching Arnaud’s eye upon him, the sailor at the wale nodded and pointed to port. The shore was still just in view. Arnaud glanced past him. Yes, he could see the rocks over there. The mist was thinner there, at the isle that protected the entrance to Southampton. Up at the forecastle, the seaman swinging the lead felt his stare upon him, and turned to catch his eye, but
then shook his head and returned to hurling his weight into the water. Silence had been demanded for today. Any who disobeyed would suffer the lash.
Over the sound of straining sheets and the slap of water he suddenly heard the noise of the sea breaking on the shore, all too close, and it drove Arnaud into a state of mild panic. The prickling excitement in his belly grew to an alarmed shudder that shook his entire body.
Although the idea of sailing like this without a clear view of all the rocks was against all sense, and felt like lunacy to a seaman, he knew this port. He had been here before. He had studied the river and the town several times, and he knew how broad was the entrance to the harbour. This was his idea: forcing the ships slowly into this estuary to take the town, and the fog aided their
silent approach.
He saw the leadsman turn again, his face pale and slightly green in the unnatural light. The crew were all the same: terrified of that horrible moment when they would all hear the graunching of the timbers rasping over rocks, the hideous crunch and moan as the strakes splintered apart. It was a nightmare vision. But he knew that this port, the safe haven for so many of the cursed English pirates, was well defended. If they had sailed up here in broad daylight, they could have damaged some ships, killed a few men – but for the vengeance he craved, this silent, assassin’s approach was better. They should catch the town unawares.
He gazed over the sailors waiting at their oars, over the mail-clad warriors waiting. A man had been shoved to the side, where he was drooling a thin vomit over the ship’s side, his body convulsing. Those nearest him registered nothing: neither disgust nor sympathy, only a weary disinterest. All the men were aware of the danger.
A shaft of sunlight struck the sea near him, and he stared over at it with surprise. It was so unexpected, it was like seeing a fireball materialise in a tavern, and the flash was so bright that it seemed almost to burn his eyes. There was a second, a third – and then the mist was gone. Instead, all about them, he saw the other ships of Harfleur, and before them the coast of
England. And the river mouth.
He bawled down to the drummer, ‘Beat the attack!’
*
Ed followed the direction of Gil’s stare, and saw what looked like a wall of vessels burst from the mist. A booming drum beat came over the calm sea, and Ed felt it like the kicks of Hal and his friends.
‘Master Gil? Master? What’s happening?’ he said.
‘Boy, run! Run to your home and lock the doors!’ Gil roared, giving him a shove that almost sent him sprawling.
Ed turned to flee, but before he reached the path to the gates he looked back, and the sight that met his eyes made him give a shocked sob.
The first of the ships were racing onwards, and already he could see the faces of the men at the prow. Bowmen, he saw, with their great crossbows, waving and shouting, urging the oarsmen to greater efforts. He saw a ship turn with a kind of negligent laziness, to ram into the flank of a fishing boat. It crumpled like a basket smashed by a hammer, the timbers parting and splinters flying up into the air, and Ed saw little dark figures leaping into the waters. Then he saw the crossbowmen taking aim, and a man rolled over, face down, a short smearing of red on the waves before the ship’s hull thrust the body beneath the waves.
‘Pa,’ he breathed.
He couldn’t move. His father’s boat was some distance from the approaching galleys, and he saw it edge about until the prow was pointing at the shore. He wanted to believe his father would survive, that the boat could win the shore before it was assaulted, but he could see already that the ships were gaining. A dull lassitude spread over him. There was a hollowness in his belly, and he felt tears assailing his eyes. He wiped them away with an angry hand, and stared until his eyes were as sore as the rest of his body.
The oars in the galleys were sweeping forward and back, the steady beating of the drums sounding clearly over the water, and then he heard the bells ringing their warning in the castle’s tower. Already he could hear shouts and screams from up in the castle and beyond. All the noise drowned out the oars.
Gil, he saw, was running down to the shoreline and bellowing to the men to get to the town’s walls, but many didn’t seem to understand. They stood, fishing nets in their hands, pails, or barrels of salted fish, staring with incomprehension as death hurried to them. And then it arrived.
A grating sound like a file on stone as a keel ran up the sand, and then a ferocious, animal roar as the first men leapt into the water, weapons already drawn. Three fishermen had knives in their hands and rushed to meet them, but two were slammed to the ground as crossbow bolts hit them from close range. The last was hacked to pieces at the water’s edge.
All too late, the other fishermen realised their error and tried to escape, but they were too late. Bolts caught three more, and a sudden flurry of men from the leading ships were bolting up the sands to cut off the men before they could reach the gates. Two more were cut down as they chased up the narrow paths, a third in the corner where Hal had beaten Ed, another who had
panicked and ran in the wrong direction, and hurtled into the storming enemy only to be stabbed and beaten with a war hammer.
And then Ed saw Gil. The old ropemaker had a knife in one hand, his rope’s end in the other, and he laid about him with the fury of a berserker. He knocked two men aside with his rope, stabbed another man, but soon he was swallowed up by the mass of men-at-arms like a stone engulfed by the tide. His rope’s end was no use against mail.
Ed recognised his own danger almost too late. He span and pelted up the slope to the castle gate at the quay, but it was already locked and barred. The sound of running men, the squeak of their belts, the clinking rattle of their mail, was all too close, and he hurtled away from them, along the side of the wall to the castle, past the great latrine ditch that reeked of the night’s sewage. Here, at low tide, there was a narrow pass that led up to the beach outside All Saints parish.
He ran on, past the beach to the Bar Gate. It was closed, and although he shouted at the guards on the towers, they ignored him. Later, when he was a man, he would realise that they couldn’t open the gates to one boy and risk the lives of all inside, but then, at that moment, he knew only despair that he was deserted, and he hated the guards up there, standing so smug and aloof,
while he waited to be slain. He was too young to curse them with any depth of feeling, but in his heart, he damned them forever. All of them, the men in the towers, those on the walls, the people inside the town. He damned them with a vicious loathing, his jealousy of their safety tearing at him. His mother was in the town, and he wanted to go to her.
Another scream, rattles of metal against metal, the distinct, fine clinking of mail, and he hurried away, along to the Strand, where there lay another broad ditch. Here he covered himself with the ordure and mud that lay at the bottom, trying to conceal himself. There was no sound of pursuit, and after a while he peeped over the edge.
Men were milling around at the shore line, where four of the immense galleys were already beached. Larger cogs were close to them, disgorging more of the pirates, and Ed felt his heart tighten when he looked out into the river for his father. There were no boats, but for three that were tacking up the river away from the carnage, and none was his father’s.
A cry went up from the shore, and another galley aimed at the Strand not far from him. He whimpered at the sight, trying to push himself into the soft soil of the ditch’s edge, but then he heard a sudden blast from a horn, and he saw the gate of the drum tower open. A posse of men emerged, many armed with long staffs and bills, some with axes. There were three watchmen with heavy falchions, and men-at-arms with their swords. Screaming their defiance, they pelted down the beach to the galley.
That was when he saw the fresh horror.
From the ship there came a great belch of fire, yellow, red and orange. It was a flame like that of a dragon, and with it there was a roar like a demon’s bellow of hatred, and Ed watched in fascinated horror as a thick, roiling smoke sprang from the ship. Three of the castle’s men were scythed down in an instant, one man was cut in two, another was blown over, staring with dumbfounded horror at his leg, which lay some distance from him. Two others were knocked from their feet, while a fine, red mist rose, and there were screams and wails of agony as the rest of the men turned and fled this new weapon of horror.
And Ed tore at the wall of his ditch, petrified with terror, convinced that these pirates were aided by the devil himself.
*
Arnaud bellowed at the men reloading the little gun with their little Pot de Feu. Men were stamping and moving about the ship, bringing up fresh little barrels of Serpentine and the iron arrows with which they loaded the strange bottle-shaped device to fire at the English on the beach.
‘Loose it at them over there,’ he bellowed, pointing at a group of archers who stood and began letting their arrows fly at them. A flurry of arrows plunged down and struck four men at the foredeck, and Arnaud shouted again, before he understood that the men at the cannon were so deafened by its blast that they could hear nothing he said.
He was nothing loath. Running the length of his ship, he flung himself over the side and landed on the shingles. There was a jarring shock in his ankle, but he ignored it as he threw himself forward at the archers.
A crossbow gave its characteristic snap, and he saw an archer spin around, a bolt in his shoulder, but then a fresh flight of arrows clattered into the shingle all about him, and he ran through their shattered pieces, little flakes and splinters flying all about him. All the way, he saw again that day fifteen years or more ago, when the English had appeared.
They had come late in the forenoon, six ships of varying sizes, manned by men like these: strong, dark-haired madmen, armed with steel and leather. They ran through the town, slashing and burning everything they could. Women and girls were grabbed and raped in the roads, while other English stood aside and watched, waiting their turn. Men were held and stabbed repeatedly or had their throats cut. The boys were beaten to death. He had seen his own brother killed, a man with a maul bringing it down on the boy’s skull. It stove in his head like an egg, and Arnaud saw his eyes roll up into his head as his legs crumpled. Then it was his go, and he turned to look at his brother as the hammer fell. It glanced from his skull and slammed into his shoulder, knocking him senseless, but not killing him. It saved his life.
Later, when he came to, sick and feeble as a kitten, he looked about him at the smoking remains of his town and swore vengeance on these sea-predators. The English were evil. He knew that. If he could, he would wipe them from the face of the earth.
*
Ed crawled away as the French thundered up the beach. One group ran past him and on to the main gates, while a second stopped and began to load and fire crossbows urgently. Looking up, Ed saw a mob of men running towards them, fishermen, peasants, a man-at-arms, all wielding axes and bills, with here and there a sword. Although some were felled with bolts, the rest came
on and slammed into the French bowmen, and a vicious little battle took place there, with blades rising and falling. It would have gone ill for the French, but then a fresh force of Frenchmen hurtled into the rear of the English, and they were cut down to a man.
Panting quickly with the shock and fear, Ed tried to move further through the ditch to escape, but as he went, the ditch grew suddenly deep. Ed plunged down into a foul, reeking liquid formed of rank sea water and sewage, and it filled his eyes and mouth and nostrils with its hideous stench.
Rising, he could not stop himself from spitting and choking. He crawled from the slime and wiped at his face with hands like claws, trying to clean the filth from him.
A shriek, a cough, and a man fell into the ditch beside him. It was a man Ed knew. A friend of his father’s called Rod the Pot because of his skill at catching lobsters with his own little traps. Ed knew him as a mild-tempered man who would give him a sup of his ale at any festival, or pass him a sweetmeat when his mother wasn’t looking. A kind man, a generous-hearted man, with a gentle manner and great spirit. And now, the blood was gushing from a great wound in his throat, and Rod was trying to staunch the flow with his hands, his legs thrashing.
Ed could do nothing to help. As he watched, Rod’s eyes took on a distant look as though peering into the distance, and the urgency of his flailing slowed. He glanced at Ed and as his soul fled, Ed would have sworn that he nodded to Ed, as though anticipating a quick reunion.
That was when Ed looked up and saw him.
*
Arnaud had already hefted his sword. He had killed the man and saw his body tumble into the sewer, and only followed to make sure the man couldn’t rise again. It was unlikely with his neck opened like that, but he was filled with the need to kill as many English as possible. This was their legacy, after their assault on his town, when they killed his mother and father, and his brother. He would eradicate the English from the world if he could. Wipe them out like the vermin deserved.
But then he saw the boy.
A little thing, small, scrawny, pathetic. But yet he could grow into an Englishman. Another to harry French ships, another to turn pirate and rob and rape and pillage all along the Norman coast. An English child could grow into a man.
He lifted his sword, just as the boy looked up at him. And in that face, Arnaud saw himself. He saw a boy who had lost his parents, a boy who was no longer scared, because the worse nightmare had already assailed him. There was no more fear in his face, only a kind of acceptance, just as Arnaud had known when he saw his brother fall, as he had known when the hammer, foul and besmeared with his brother’s blood, had raised again to club him.
To kill that boy would be like killing himself, he thought. But he also realised that if he didn’t, it was this boy and others like him who would continue the feud.
Better to kill him.
He lifted the sword again, but as he did so, a ripping sensation tore at his breast. Looking down, he saw the huge barb of an iron bolt. It grew from his belly like a flower of death, red and thick with his clotting blood.
The sword fell from his hands and he fell to his knees. Those fools on the ship had carried on firing. One bolt from the Pot au Feu had reached all the way up here, and at the last had killed him, the man who had thought to bring it with him.
*
Ed watched as he tumbled to the ground, the man taking no notice of Ed as his breathing grew harsh and ragged. Blood trickled from his mouth, but Arnaud did not try to speak. He had nothing to say. His death was a relief.
Not that Ed knew anything of that. All he knew was that his old life was over.
After the French had slipped away again, their long, low galleys backing away from the shore, he climbed from his ditch and stared about him. Smoke rose from the town and from the beach, where the boats had been set ablaze. Men were all about the sands and shingle, some moving with slow desperation, while some few women, their clothing rent, went from man to man, searching for their own loved ones. Some women sat in the remains of their clothing near the town’s walls where they had been raped, staring at the sea with empty, dulled expressions, clutching their rags to themselves as if they could cover their humiliation and anguish. Many lay still, their blood spattering the ground about them.
Ed stood, and as he looked at the devastation, he became filled with a firm desire.
He would never rest, never. Not until he had somehow managed to visit vengeance on the foul people who had done this to him and to his town.
As soon as he could, he would go to France. He would kill all the French in his path, if he could. He would slaughter them all.