The King had ordered a retreat in an effort to maintain discipline, but it was impossible amid the press. Whipping frenzied hounds off a kill was never an easy task and for the moment the English were forging forward, intent on taking the main obstacle in their path – the tower of the Pont St-Pierre.
The English forced the French back across the bridge to the very gates of the tower where some French knights in a fury of heavy fighting gained that safety. Others strove to make their escape into the citadel in the newer part of the city, and were cut down.
Breathing hard, blinking stinging sweat from his good eye, Thomas paused in a moment’s lull to study the tower. The door might hold, but not for long – the seething mass of English foot soldiers hammering at it would soon break through. Gouts of smoke gusted over the bridge from the burning ships on the river, and the water was full of men struggling and drowning.
A window high up in the tower suddenly popped open, and someone thrust out a banner on a pole, heavily tasselled, glinting with embroidery, and beside it, flapping limply on a spear, astained white shirt. Thomas squinted up through his smarting vision.
‘Hah, they want to surrender!’ Otto said.
Others had seen the banners, and baying jeers rose from the clot of English soldiers on the bridge – and the attack on the doors increased.
Thomas stared, thinking quickly. ‘That’s Raoul de Brienne’s banner!’ He had not seen de Brienne since the Prussian campaign, but they had made a lasting bond during the many convivial evenings they had spent together at the camp fire. He was also the Comte d’Eu and a superb ransom prize – if he wasn’t slaughtered first by the bloodthirsty mob.
The banners withdrew into the tower and a head emerged, wearing a pot helm that exposed the face. ‘Thomas!’ de Brienne bellowed. ‘Thomas Holland! In God’s name, man, as you love me, get me out of here, and give me – us – shelter!’
Thomas looked round. He was the only commander in the vicinity, and in this moment, if he succeeded, here was his miracle – his promise of enough wealth to take his case forward to Avignon and win Jeanette back. He raised his hand and waved to Raoul to acknowledge him, then spurred Noir forward. At first no one paid him any heed for they were too caught up in the intensity of their own desires. Thomas drew breath and gave out the cry that called his own men to rally around his banner, a loud ‘Hoo!’ sound drawn from the chest and the base of the throat. Otto took it up, then de la Haye and de la Salle, and the rest of the squires and knights of his immediate retinue, and it resonated, gaining power. ‘Hoo, Hoo, Hoo!’
‘Make way!’ roared Otto. ‘Make way in the name of King Edward!’
Gradually the soldiers fell back, although some had to be clubbed and struck with whips; but the majority came to heel.
Thomas rose in the saddle. ‘I have orders to take alive an important hostage for the King!’ he roared. ‘Let no man stand in my way on pain of his own death!’
He rode up to the doors, dismounted, and banged upon the nail-studded oak with his sword hilt. ‘Open up by order of King Edward, King of France and England!’ he bellowed.
There was a taut silence from behind the door. At Thomas’s back, Otto organised their own men and archers into a defensive seam to hold back the tide. Then they heard the rough scrabble of the draw bar, and the door yielded a crack to reveal the sweaty face of one of de Brienne’s adjutants.
‘Bring down your lord,’ Thomas said brusquely. ‘We offer him safe passage if he comes now, but I cannot guarantee his life beyond these moments. You see how it is. Those who would live, do it now and swiftly while you can.’
The door closed again.
‘This is dangerous,’ Otto muttered.
‘When are our lives not bounded by danger?’ Thomas replied with a mordant smile. ‘How else do we know we’re alive save when we are facing what we might lose and what we might gain?’
Otto grimaced at him. ‘I prefer your reflections over a cup of wine after the fight, not on the battlefield.’
The door opened fully to reveal Raoul de Brienne and his knights and squires, battered, bruised, one of them sporting a blood-soaked arrow wound below his collar bone.
De Brienne bowed to Thomas and presented him with his scabbarded sword. ‘My lord, I yield myself and my men into your care and cry surrender.’
‘And I accept your surrender in the name of King Edward of France and England,’ Thomas declared loudly, accepting the blade. ‘You are now under his protection and you will not be harmed. I give you my oath, even as you give me your surrender. Now come, and let us have you to safety.’
Leaving the tower, Thomas felt the hair prickling on the back of his neck for the atmosphere was as taut as a bowstring and the common soldiers resonated with tension, holding in the fragile moment between action and deed. A horse was found and de Brienne scrambled into the saddle, although the others had to go on foot, surrounded by Thomas’s men.
‘I owe you my life,’ Raoul said as Thomas and his contingent pushed a path through the combatants, with Otto and Henry bellowing ‘Make way, make way!’ and the Holland lion banners wafting conspicuously.
‘Indeed you do,’ Thomas replied, although he tinged the words with sympathy. ‘And more than that, you owe me a ransom.’
‘I did not think you rescued me for love and chivalry alone,’ the Frenchman said wryly.
‘We are both men of the world who know how to deal in practicalities.’
Their conversation ceased as Thomas concentrated on taking his prize out of danger, and sent him on to the baggage camp under Otto’s escort with several knights.
Once he was certain that his prize was clear and away, he returned to the fray with renewed vigour and determination, feeling rather like a blacksmith faced with hammering a molten piece of iron into a useable tool.
Thomas took a cup of wine from his squire in the hall of the Abbaye aux Dames where his men had laid claim to a sleeping area. He had removed his armour, washed and changed his clothes, but his nostrils were still full of the smell of blood and battle, of sweat and dust, smoke and ordure. He excelled in that arena, indeed took joy in the play of weapons and strategy, but today he had had a surfeit of carnage. The streets of Caen werelittered with the gore of death – mostly French, both soldiers and civilians.
