The Marsh King's Daughter (21 page)

The English sighted their French quarry off the Kentish north Foreland, heading in formation for the mouth of the Thames.

Nicholas narrowed his eyes and through the bluster of wind counted the number of sails, finding that it tallied with the intelligence report. His heart began to pound like a drum and his palms were damp as he checked that his sword was properly fastened at his hip.

The French spotted them and, distantly, Nicholas heard jeering laughter. With Eustace the Monk leading them in and the English beaten at every turn in the Narrow
Sea, the French were not unduly bothered by the motley collection of vessels standing off to windward. They clewed their sails ready for battle, but without urgency or alarm.

The jeering increased when Hubert de Burgh commanded his flagship to veer away from contact. On the nearest French ships, figures could be scene capering and making obscene gestures with fists and forearms.

'That will soon change,' Nicholas murmured. His belly churned but with a surge of aggression rather than nausea. 'Martin, bring her round.'

'Aye, sir.' Martin cupped his hands and began yelling orders.

'Ready with arrows and lime, Master Sorale?' Nicholas asked the commander of the soldiers occupying the raised decks of the Pandora's two castles.

Sorale adjusted the strap on his helm and wiped his forefinger beneath his nose. Already pink runnels of sweat were striping his cheeks. 'Aye, we're ready, but I cannot see why you ask when we're running in the opposite direction.'

'We're not.' As he spoke, the Pandora kicked and began to wear ship in a cream of spray. The wind bellied into her sail and suddenly she was surging like a wild horse towards the French ships.

'See, we've taken their wind.' Nicholas grinned wolfishly. 'There's nothing they can do except be run down.'

Sorale took to his heels, bellowing orders to his men. Shading his eyes, Nicholas stood at the Pandora's prow. The stiff breeze whipped his garments against his body and buffeted him so that he had to grasp a rope to steady himself.

Ahead of the Pandora, the ship under the command of Philip d'Albini came within range of the first French vessels and attacked. A swarm of arrows whined through the air and plummeted into wood and rigging, sails and flesh. The jeers became screams of agony and panic. Second and third volleys increased the destruction of the first and the French unclewed their sails and tried to run.

A large nef bearing the fleur-de-lis banner on the wooden platform over her rudder hissed through the water towards the English lines. Spume netted her bows and jewels of water dripped from the fangs of the dragon head on her prow. The French soldiers on board returned the arrow fire as she heeled in close to the smaller nef of Richard Fitzjohn, just ahead of the Pandora.

'Christ, she's going to ram!' Nicholas paused by the mast and stared in horror. There was a choked scream as one of their own soldiers took a French arrow through the arm. 'Hold her steady!' Nicholas bellowed.

The French ship ploughed into the smaller nef in a crunch of timbers. The sea lashed in white tongues between the two vessels. Grapnels were thrown and sword steel flashed in the summer blue. Cries for King Henry, cries for Louis, were ripped by the wind amid less articulate battle howls as soldiers and sailors from both sides clashed. There was nowhere to run. It was either kill, be killed, or drown.

The Pandora hove in fast across the Frenchman's bows, and Captain Sorale's men began bombarding the enemy with the stones and the pots of pulverised lime. The clay containers smashed upon the wash strake and open deck, enveloping the French crew and soldiers in stinging clouds of white powder. Blinded, choking, they could neither defend themselves, nor flee. Their sail was clewed up ready for battle and they were burdened with a cargo of horses and a huge, stone-throwing trebuchet, dismantled in pieces across the open hold.

Soon the French flagship was surrounded by four English vessels, all plying grapnels. Choking on lime, Eustace's men were helpless to defend their ship.

Nicholas leaped across the tight-lashed grapnel rope and on to the Frenchman's deck. Trapped on all sides, the nef lurched and sawed in the water. Drawing his sword Nicholas attacked not men, but the rigging that bound up the great sail. Martin Wudecoc ran to his aid with a Dane axe. Between them they hacked through all the vital halyards then leaped aside, exchanging broad grins. With a sound like a massive roll of thunder, the sail collapsed in a great smothering blanket of canvas, engulfing all beneath it.

The end came swiftly after that. The French surrendered and the fleur-de-lis banner flying from the stern of the flagship was ripped down and brandished to a massive English cheer. On seeing their flagship taken, the rest of the French fleet scattered in disarray, many to be captured by the jubilant English.

Nicholas's eyes were pouring with tears from the effects of the powdered lime. Blinking hard, trying not to rub them, he was about to reboard the Pandora, when another triumphant shout made him turn. Captain Sorale emerged from the hold with the master of the fourth English ship, a man named Stephen Trabe. Between them, they escorted a squat, powerfully built sailor with a weather-browned pate, bordered at the base of the skull by a horseshoe of corn-white hair. His face was pocked and scarred, and his protuberant blue eyes were red and streaming.

'Here he is!' boomed Stephen Trabe, his lip curling in a sneer. 'The greatest mariner and pirate in northern waters, and the scum of the world. Look well, every one of you. Look well on the face of Eustace the Monk. Not so fearsome now, is he?'

Eustace shrugged within his captors' grip and stared insolently around the circle of witnesses. 'I care not a fig for your opinions,' he sneered. 'For if I am scum, none of you is worth more than a pot of leper's piss. Were my ship not so laden, I would still have defeated you with my hands tied.' Twisting his head, he spat in Trabe's face. 'You're a pirate yourself, Trabe, a filthy mackerel feeding off better men's leavings.'

Trabe turned as red as his hair, then white. Jerking Eustace out of Sorale's grip, he slammed the prisoner down on his knees and drew his sword. 'You have a choice,' he choked. 'Either I slice your head from your neck across the main beam of that trebuchet, or I use the ship's rail. Which is it to be, you whoreson traitor?'

'Your choices are about as imaginative as the size of your mind,' Eustace sneered. 'What will Hubert de Burgh say when he discovers that you had slaughtered me rather than accept a pledge of ten thousand marks for my life and the promise of fealty to King Henry.'

There was a stunned silence. Everyone knew that Eustace had changed sides more often than a dinner table in a busy great hall, but this was unbelievable. So was the sum of ten thousand marks.

Trabe snorted down his nose. 'Hubert de Burgh will say that I chose well.' Before anyone could move to prevent him, he raised his sword, bringing it round and down in a single razored swipe. Head and body hit the deck simultaneously but apart and men leaped away in horror to avoid the spray of blood. Nicholas's gorge rose and he had to swallow hard. He had seen and encountered hard battle more than once in his life, had killed in the heat of it to save his skin, but he would never grow accustomed, or develop a relish for it as some men did. There was exhilaration in outwitting an enemy and emerging alive from the fray, but not in slaughter.

Trabe lifted Eustace's body, and without heed for the blood, shoved it over the ship's side. There was a flat smack as it hit the water, and then a green wave closed over the corpse and took it down. With a grunt of approval, Trabe turned away. Taking a spear from one of the soldiers, he rammed Eustace's head on to the iron point and set it at the prow like a figurehead. It dripped in the sea-wind, an obscene grin on its face.

Sickened, almost retching, Nicholas made for the haven of the Pandora.

In Dover there was great celebration at the English victory. Most of the larger French ships had escaped intact to Calais, but many of the smaller ones had been captured with their supplies, thus depriving Louis of his provisions and his hopes of winning
England
for himself.

Besides some fine horses and the trebuchet, Eustace's vessel had yielded several chests of coin and bolts of silk intended for Louis's royal household. Hubert de Burgh divided the spoils, and Nicholas found himself the recipient of a pouch of gold bezants and a length of flame-coloured silk. He distributed half the money to his crew. The silk could be sold for a profit in Boston; he had no intention of keeping it, magnificent though it was. The associations were too dark.

The head of Eustace the Monk was paraded on the walls of Dover keep. It seemed to Nicholas as if the entire population of the port came out to see the grisly token and cheer. Eustace had been hated in the town for the suffering he had caused to English shipping and to English sailors, many of them Dover men. The air was festive, the taverns full to overflowing with celebrants.

As captain of one of the vessels that had captured Eustace, Nicholas was feted at the castle and plied with wine and mead until his head spun. He made a determined effort to shake off the memory of Stephen Trabe hewing Eustace's head from his body and ramming it on that pike. It was difficult when Trabe himself was accounted the hero of the day for his deed with toast upon toast raised in his honour.

Wearying of the feast, Nicholas made his excuses and wove somewhat unsteadily from the hall in search of a garderobe to ease his bladder. There were several communal ones on the first floor, built into the thickness of the wall. The pungent stink of urine and faeces was intensified by the waste channel of damp stone. Holding both penis and breath, Nicholas finished as quickly as he could, and hastened away from the place, but not back to the hall. He could not stomach any more celebration. Instead, he wandered the labyrinthine keep, investigating nooks and stairways, peering out through thin arrowslits on a darkness that was filled with the roar and surge of the sea.

He came eventually to the lower floor chapel. This was not the grand one for the King's use, but a smaller, less ostentatious affair for the members of the garrison. Nicholas hesitated. The light of votive candles flickered in cressets and the soft, golden darkness beckoned to him. Although a priest had shriven him that morning before putting to sea, he still felt that he had business with God - to thank Him for surviving, to pray for the souls who had not.

Entering the darkness he crossed himself and paused to light his own votive taper with a hand made unsteady by drink. Then he bent his knee to the altar cross and genuflected. Raising his bowed head, he realised that he was not alone. A woman was already kneeling on the chapel floor, her hands clasped in prayer. She looked round at him and he saw the pale oval of her face and the coppery gleam of her braid showing below her wimple. Tears glinted on her cheeks and he could hear the shaking of her breath as she strove to control her weeping. He thought he recognised her, but wasn't sure.

'Forgive me for intruding,' he said, his voice a little slurred.

She shook her head. 'You are not intruding. I was about to leave.' She rose to her feet in a single fluid motion that made him acutely aware of her height and the lush curves of her body.

'Not on my account, I hope.'

'No. I have said my prayers.' She wiped her face on the back of her hand and as she looked at him, Nicholas remembered her. Edwin le Grun's statuesque mistress. Edwin's ship, the St Jerome, had taken part in the battle, but Nicholas could not recall seeing its small, portly master in the hall tonight.

'Edwin's dead,' she said as if reading his mind, and sniffed into a linen kerchief she pulled from her sleeve.

'Dead?' Nicholas frowned. As far as he was aware, the only serious fighting had been in his section. Otherwise the French had run like chickens with salted tails. 'How?'

'A seizure on board as he went to the attack.' She blew her nose. 'The crew say that he just dropped like a stone.'

'I am sorry to hear that. I saw him yester eve before the battle and he appeared hale and hearty then.'

'He was.' Fresh tears brimmed in her eyes, accompanied by a tremulous smile. 'More so than in a long time.'

Lost for words, Nicholas could only gaze at her in sympathy and speculation.

'They are taking him home to his wife.' Her voice wobbled. 'People think I stayed with him for his wealth, but there was more to our bargain than money alone.'