Authors: Martin Archer
Tags: #Historical Fiction
Our man in front is carrying a candle lamp. Everyone else is shuffling along in the pitch black dark and periodically scrapping the side of the tunnel and either skinning his knuckles or banging his head. Everyone instinctively knows not to say a word.
It’s a slow journey and seems to go downhill. Then it changes and goes mostly uphill with a stone step or two every so often that inevitably stubs the toes of each of us. It ends at a wooden door.
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Our lamp carrier stops. As I look around the men standing ahead of me I can vaguely see the outline of a wooden door. I hold both my breath and my sword as he pulls and it creaks as it opens a crack. After a long wait we start forward again. Now we’re in a widened passageway, almost a cavern, and walking up a slope past what look like old mining tools and large rocks that have been pushed aside. We almost immediately reach another wooden door.
Once again our lamp carrier slowly cracks it open and peers inside. With the door squeaking loud enough to wake the dead he pushes it open and enters and once again our line begins moving.
I can smell the urine before I even get to the door. I’ve smelled cat piss like this many times before and I know exactly what we are entering – it’s a store room for the castle’s food and it’s got cats in it to keep away the mice and rats. The cats piss and shit on the floor below the barrel and sacks of food and that’s what I smell.
Our lamp carrier stops and holds it high. What we can dimly see in the flickering light is a cavern filled with sacks of grain and tubs and barrels of what must be butter and cheese. There are big piles of turnips and onions stacked on wooden planks. Everything is sitting on logs to keep them off the ground and allow the castle’s cats to get at any hungry mice and rats. There are even deer carcasses hanging from hooks in the wall. We’re in the castle’s larder.
“Keep holding it up” I order the lamp carrier in a whisper as more and more men slowly shuffle into the room. Everyone is extremely tense and excited including me.
“Go forward and help guard the entrance. Don’t let anyone in. Be silent.”
That’s the message I whisper into a number of ears as I push the men past the lamp carrier towards the entrance at the other end of the cavernous room.
I’ve got an idea.
I begin whispering new orders when all the men are finally out of the tunnel and into the storeroom.
“Pick up a sack of grain and carry it down the tunnel to the pilgrim’s prayer house. Stack it up inside. Wait there. Don’t go outside and show yourself. Piss or shite in there if you have to go.”
For what seems like forever our men carry food out of the castle. Periodically I stop the carrying so the men in the little prayer house can return through the narrow tunnel to get another load. Some of the men start stuffing onions and turnips into empty sacks.
Then it happens. Someone in the castle comes to get food from the storeroom. The door opens, and a terrified woman screams and drops her candle. There are more shouts behind her. And then, goddamnit, the draft of air through the open door causes our candle to flicker and go out. Everyone starts talking at once.
“Silence goddamnit. Silence.” .… “No talking. Defend the door. Don’t let anyone in,” I shout in the darkness to the guards at the storeroom entrance. “We’re going to keep carrying the food out. Get the damn meat off the hooks if you can’t find any more grain sacks or cheeses to carry.”
“And get that candle she dropped.”
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An unknown number of Launceston’s defenders rush to the scene – and then back away. No one likes fighting in the dark. It’s a standoff we are winning because we are continuing to remove the food.
Finally a voice calls in French. “Who are you?”
“Henry FitzCount and his bishop have run away and now your food is gone,” I answer. “Save yourselves and Lady Isabel. Sortie from the gate and we will not block your way.”
Of course not – since you’re a totally dishonorable French knight our archers will stand to one side and shoot you down as you go past.
“
How do we know we can trust you, Monsieur?”
“You cannot. But in about an hour you’ll be able to see from the ramparts that we have pulled back from the entrance and there are boats at the river crossing. And you can leave the castle servants without losing your honor - Lord William will retain them in their positions if they pledge their liege to him.”
Not that you care about honor or have any left to lose.
Our standoff continues for over an hour until what is left of the food is on its way down the tunnel. There is now no need to fight our way into the castle and lose men. So we follow the last of the food as it goes into the tunnel.
I am pulling everyone back because I want the knights to come in and see that their food is gone – and I want to organize the archers to give the knights the warm welcome they deserve when they sortie, as they most certainly will if we got all of their food.
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Within an hour our archers are off to the side of the castle gate in five deep formations in their companies with the pikemen in the first two ranks as usual. We wait all the rest of the day and early evening – and nothing happens. Could they have escaped through another tunnel? It’s possible. What we’ve learned from the villagers is that the whole area is honeycombed with mines and tunnels.
We finally dismiss the men long after the sun goes down and the night gets colder. We are billeting them in the low ceiling hovels that comprise the village homes and they are sleeping with their clothes on and weapons at hand.
Thomas and I are exhausted and asleep in the smoke filled hovel nearest the little pilgrim’s chapel where we killed Henry FitzCount and his men. The chapel has guards in the tunnel. It is not being used as a shelter because it is stuffed to its low ceiling with bags and barrels of foodstuffs from the castle.
The villager and his family are sleeping shoulder to shoulder with almost two dozen or more of our men. It is so crowded most of have to sleep sitting up. But the heat of our bodies warms the place and we are content.
Dawn is still two hours away when both of the castle’s gates suddenly open and Launceston Castle’s two drawbridges begin to come down almost simultaneously. Visibility barely exists because of the cloud cover and waning moon. It is, I must admit, the best time for a sortie and I should have seen it coming.
Our men pour out of the village when the sortie begins and the alarm sounds. Most are not even close to their company’s position when the mounted French knights begin pouring out of the castle and over the drawbridges.
Some of our men reach their places and begin closing up to provide compact formations as we have so often practiced. Most of our men, however, are not ready. They are either lost in the dark or are still coming because they have further to run.
Thomas and I dash out the door and arrive at the nearest company just as the horses ridden by the first French knights begin clattering across the second drawbridge. A quick thinking sergeant is already bellowing out orders to the archers and pikemen.
And impressing me by making decisions. I must remember to get his name.
“Launch at the near drawbridge and keep shooting. Launch at the drawbridge and keep shooting. Shoot… Shoot. Godamnit… Up pikes… Up pikes. Pike men crouch down.”
Are they coming to fight?
Within seconds it is clear that the knights and their men on foot are trying to escape from Launceston rather than coming to fight us. Thomas and I and everyone around us are launching arrows as fast as we can shoot. We can hear the clattering hoofs and see vague outlines of the horsemen but we can’t see specific targets. It’s too dark.
“Do you think it will work?” my priestly brother gasps as he grabs another arrow from his big quiver and shoots again.
“Can’t tell. We’ll know soon.” I gasp back as I launch one right behind his.
It was a hard run to get here and we’re both still out of breath.
What Thomas is asking about is what we did right after it got dark last night - we scattered two wagon loads of caltrops right where horses will step as they come off the Launceston Castle’s drawbridge. We are using every one of the caltrops we got from the Acre fortress. I brought them with me when I came to Launceston.
Well of course I did; we’re not exactly virgins when it comes to besieging a castle are we? Or being besieged in one for that matter.
There is a lot of shouting and noise everywhere. But then it begins to change and grow with the familiar sound of horses and knights hitting the ground as they come off the drawbridge. The growing rain of arrows and the horses impaling their hoofs on the sharp points of the caltrops are doing their job.
It’s what we expected. Once one horse goes down in a narrow area those coming on fast behind it also begin going down as they crash into those who’ve gone down in front of them. That’s particularly true in the darkness when the frantic horses and their riders can’t see enough to avoid the downed horse and knights in front of them and don’t have any place to go even if they do.
We can’t see it very well in the moonlight, but we can certainly hear it. Within seconds it is obvious that there is a growing pile of screaming men and horses at the end of the drawbridge and constant splashes as some the rearmost horses and riders are forced off the bridge and into the water of the moat. Behind the charging knights are their archers and men at arms running hard in a desperate effort to escape. They add to the confusion and make things worse by trying to get away by climbing over the growing pile of kicking horse and struggling men.
Chapter Eight
A few of the knights in the very front rank of the sortie ride free and some of the French men at arms are able to climb over the huge and growing pile of horses and men and run away. Most do not.
Hours later in the dawn’s early light we begin pulling the dead and injured from the great mass of horses and men. It is obvious that many of the men and horses trapped at the bottom of the huge pile died of suffocation.
Later in the morning we begin fishing drowned knights and men at arms out of moat to get their armor and weapons. But the water is so cold I quickly call off the effort – they’ll still be there in the summer.
Missing is Lady Isabel. She’s not among the dead and injured. It’s possible she’s still in the castle so I send a party of men under Henry the London archer sergeant in through the tunnel to explore while Thomas and I deal with the prisoners.
The archers, men at arms, and servants of the knights – the men stranded on the drawbridge and outside the castle gate because they followed the knights, are immediately freed – after they point out the knights among the survivors who rode with Henry FitzCount on the attack on Trematon or stood with him during his fraudulent challenge. They all did, the bastards, and now they are getting what they deserve - they are all being thrown in the carts with the dead and taken shivering and moaning and crying for mercy to be thrown in the river.
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What remains of Henry FitzCount disappears while we wait to see who is in the castle - our men throw him and the bishop into one of the carts that is taking their dead and wounded knights for a swim in the Tamar to wash away their sins. It will be a permanent swim because their sins are so great for killing children and betraying their knightly oaths.
Besides, as I explain to Thomas, the ground is too frozen to dig and our men have worked hard enough. The knights’ horses, of course, will be butchered and eaten unless they might still be usable. Waste not, want not, as the good book says.
Thomas and I talk while we watch the carts being loaded and the dead and injured horses cut up. We’re waiting to approach the castle gate and our mood is somber as we talk and watch the dead and wounded knights being stripped of their armor and shoes and thrown into the carts.
The shrieks and pleas of the wounded knights fall on deaf ears as they are thrown into the wagons – every one of our men saw the butchered children and watched the dishonorable bastards ride away from the field outside of Trematon.
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Our victory raises a number of questions. Should we bring Sir Percy here to Launceston or move here ourselves or stay at Restormel? We decide to stay at Restormel at least until next summer – primarily because that’s where the boys are and it’s closer to the River Fowey ships where our ships are anchored and beached.
We also decide on Martin the archer from London to be the commander at Launceston. Martin’s not the brightest candle but he’s steady and we’ll leave someone like Peter to be his second. Peter’s the fast thinking sergeant who had the archers shooting at the sortieing knights even before Thomas and I got there to give the order. Sir Percy and his wife will stay at Trematon.