Kemp Read online

  Kemp: Passage at Arms

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Historical Notes

  Also by Jonathan Lunn

  Watchmen of Rome

  Copyright

  Endnotes

  Kemp: Passage at Arms

  Jonathan Lunn

  For Louise

  Chapter One

  ‘It seems he found his glory, then,’ Sir Thomas Holland said bleakly.

  Holland was dressed in full armour, the jupon bearing his coat of arms – a white lion on an azure background patterned with fleurs-de-lys – slashed and bloody, but the blood was not his own, for the sword-strokes which had rent it had failed to pierce the chain-mail habergeon beneath. The visor of his eggshaped bascinet, now scratched and dented, was raised to reveal the face of a man in his mid-thirties, clean-shaven, a patch of white silk covering his left eye, the right one dark, piercing and intense, giving his bronzed features a saturnine appearance.

  Beside him stood his serjeant-at-arms, a dour Lancastrian named Wat Preston, a stocky man with close-cropped hair and a seamed face, wearing a broad-brimmed ‘kettle’ helmet and a brigandine jerkin of leather reinforced with steel plates. The rest of the huddle of men was made up of five archers, the remainder of Preston’s platoon. Their ages ranged from sixteen to fifty-five, although even the youngest, Limkin Tate, had the look of a battle-scarred veteran about him now. Less well-armoured than Holland, their own clothes were torn and blood-stained, as often as not with their own blood, and all of them had sustained wounds. Their faces were pale and drawn from lack of sleep, their chins covered in stubble. With tired eyes, they gazed down at the body of Holland’s squire, and at the broken-off point of a lance in his stomach. He lay with his bloodied sword in his right hand, his left hand clutching Holland’s banner to his breast, as if he had died trying to save it from capture. His blue eyes stared blankly up into the misty sky.

  The squire had not been the only one to die in the battle. Although mist now shrouded the battlefield, the survivors could see bodies strewn across the hillside, heaped thickest where the fighting had been at its most fierce. Assisted by two heralds and two clerks, three knights now moved amongst the corpses, making a careful tally of the men of quality who had been slain. No one bothered to count the bodies of the dead commoners. There were looters too, working their way steadily across the field of death to rob the dead and the dying alike; human versions of the carrion crows engaged in taking their pick of the spoils.

  It had been Martin Kemp’s first pitched battle.

  Kemp was the second youngest member of the platoon, only a few months older than Tate, a broad-shouldered young man with high cheekbones which gave his lean-jawed face a slightly gaunt look. The pale blond hair beneath his arming cap was cut short, his eyes a cold flint-blue. A rough bandage was tied about his head, dark with dried blood above his left ear. Four months ago he had been a villein, innocent of war, pushing a plough on his lord’s demesne.

  He had come a long way in four months. He had thought himself a man when he lay with a woman for the first time: Lady Beatrice, the daughter of his lord, Sir John Beaumont. But Beaumont had learned of the liaison, and framed Kemp with the rape and murder of a woman Kemp had never even met. Condemned to death, Kemp had been offered a pardon if he served in the king’s army for twelve months.

  A month and a half later he killed a man for the first time, a peasant levy on the beach at Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue. Then he realised that loss of innocence came not with carnal knowledge but with the knowledge of what it was like to look into a man’s eyes as you robbed him of his life. Loss of innocence was nothing to be proud of, he had realised.

  But that had been only the beginning. He had marched through Normandy with the king’s army, burning and pillaging towns and villages. He had taken part in the assault of Caen, and in the subsequent sack of the city he realised that he had not yet lost all his innocence, for more of it was torn from his soul when he raped a young woman in a frenzy of blood-lust; and yet more when he saw his best friend murdered by a whore in the town of Oisemont; and more still when he fought for his life in the bloody chaos on the field of Crécy.

  In the thick of the action, Kemp had thought the French knights must overwhelm the English line at any moment, for the enemy far outnumbered the English and the Welsh in King Edward’s service. Now he realised his platoon had suffered disproportionately high casualties because it had been in the front line where the French almost broke through; all told, only a few hundred English and Welshmen had been killed. The French dead numbered thousands. It had not been a battle; it had been a massacre.

  Gazing about at the corpse-strewn hillside, Kemp realised that innocence was not something that could be lost in one fell swoop, but a quality that was ripped away shred by shred. He had left England with high hopes, thinking that war would give him a chance to prove himself worthy of Lady Beatrice’s love, despite his humble birth. Last night, at Crécy, he knew he had proved himself as brave as any nobleman; better still, after the battle, he had run into Richard Stamford, Beaumont’s squire and Kemp’s rival for the love of Beatrice. The two of them had fought, and Kemp had won. It seemed there was nothing to stop him claiming Beatrice’s hand.

  Except for the woman at Caen.

  He had set out to prove himself as chivalrous as the bravest nobleman. Instead he had proved he could be as cruel as the worst of them. He thought of his friends Hal Drayton, Pip Herrick and Jankin Newbolt, all slain in the battle, and John Conyers and Hick Lowesby, badly wounded and even now lighting for their lives in the nearby abbey of Crécy-Grange. None of them had been perfect, but they had been good fellows at heart. Any one of them would have given his life to protect his companions. But Kemp felt as if he had betrayed them just as he had betrayed Beatrice by raping the woman at Caen.

  He felt ashamed.

  The seven men heard the jingle of harness, and almost as one they looked up to see a herald trotting down the slope towards them, his palfrey picking its way fastidiously amongst the corpses. He reined in and raised his right hand to the brim of his hat in salute to Holland, mimicking the gesture knights used to raise their visors, even though he did not wear a bascinet.

  ‘Sir Thomas? My lord of Warwick presents his compliments, and requests that you rally your company and join him by yonder banner…’ The herald gestured with one hand before realising that a bank of fog rolling across the battlefield had obscured the Earl of Warwick’s banner. ‘Oh! Well, he’s over there somewhere, about four hundred yards away…’

  Holland nodded brusquely, and the herald rode off in search of other scattered units from Warwick’s battalion. ‘Kemp!’

  Kemp forced himself to snap out of his guilt-ridden reverie. ‘Sir Thomas?’

  ‘You’re good with horses, aren’t you? Fetch my courser and lance, and meet the rest of us by Warwick’s banner.’

  At once Kemp turned back up the face of the ridge to where Holland’s warhorse was corralled with the other knights’ mounts at the centre of a leaguer formed from the army’s baggage wagons. He was beyond exhaustion now, treading on the corpses that lay in his path out of numb obliviousness rather than cold-hearted indifference. While the ba
ttlefield itself was deserted but for the dead, dying and the looters, the scene around the leaguer to the rear of where the English lines had stood was one of considerable activity as men loaded booty into the wagons, packed away tents or, like Kemp, fetched their masters’ horses.

  Holland’s warhorse was a dappled-grey courser named Peledargent – ‘Silverpelt’ – a massive seventeen hands high. It was one of many such beasts corralled in the leaguer, each one clearly branded. Kemp found the wagon in which Holland’s tent, saddle and lance were stored, and saddled the horse quickly and efficiently, mounting it himself to return to where Holland waited. At first he rode it at a trot, but he soon gained confidence and as he reached the crest of the ridge he spurred it into a gallop, enjoying the refreshing sensation of the wind on his face and feeling his earlier sense of gloom dispel with the exhilaration of the ride.

  He could not fail to find Warwick’s red and gold banner, even in the fog, for it stood next to the Earl of Northampton’s above a column of about three hundred men on one of the roads leading off the battlefield to the east. His companions stood with the other dismounted archers towards the rear of the column. The other platoon of archers in Holland’s company was also there; like Preston’s, it had been in the thick of the fighting. Although the two platoons had now merged into one, with only eighteen men it was still under strength.

  Despite their exhaustion, Kemp’s companions managed a mocking cheer when they saw him ride the courser out of the mist. ‘Did Sir Thomas give you permission to ride Peledargent?’ asked Daw Oakley, the oldest member of the platoon.

  Kemp flushed as he handed the lance to David Brewster – a lean, handsome lad with bright blue eyes – before dismounting. ‘I just thought it would be the quickest way of getting here with the horse…’

  ‘Ignore him, lad, he’s teasing you,’ said Preston.

  Kemp nodded. ‘Where’s Sir Thomas, serjeant?’

  ‘Up yonder.’ Preston jerked a thumb over his shoulder, towards the head of the column. ‘Blabbing with their lordships.’

  ‘Any idea what they want with us, serjeant?’ asked Brewster, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of marsh-reed.

  ‘Maybe they want to knight us all for valour,’ scoffed Oakley.

  Holland strode back from the head of the column, and Kemp held Peledargent’s bridle while the knight swung himself into the saddle before taking his lance from Brewster. ‘We’ve been asked to conduct a reconnaissance in force,’ the knight told his serjeant, but speaking clearly for the benefit of his men. ‘Valois is still out there somewhere, with the rest of his army. His Majesty wants to deal the death-blow.’

  ‘The rest of his army!’ muttered a tall, thin man with a face pitted by childhood pox. He had been in Holland’s other platoon and Kemp knew him only vaguely. Searching his memory, he came up with a name: Elias Jarrom. ‘Then whose corpses did we leave strewn all over that hillside?’ demanded Jarrom, gesturing back through the fog.

  ‘There are plenty of bodies there, but there aren’t sixty thousand,’ growled Holland. ‘And that’s how many men they reckon Valois had with him. The battle isn’t over yet, lads.’

  They marched in silence, the thick fog lending the countryside an eerie feel. It was the end of August, and within a couple of hours the hot sun would boil away the mist, but for now the condensation billowed from the mouths and nostrils of men and horses alike.

  Riding at the head of the column, the Earl of Warwick reined in, and raised a gloved hand to signal a halt. Behind him, inattentive men bumped into one another. The earl heard swearing and the clattering of dropped weapons. He gestured impatiently for silence. Watching the earl, the men saw he was listening, and they listened as well.

  Silence.

  Then Kemp heard it too. The tramp of feet, the clop of hooves and the clinking of harness. Faint – some way off through the mist – but unmistakable.

  ‘How many reconnaissance forces did his Majesty send out?’ murmured Preston.

  ‘Just the one, Wat,’ Holland replied softly. ‘Just the one.’

  They stared at the fog, in the direction from which the sounds were coming. Whoever was out there was drawing closer.

  Dark, half-imagined shapes in the mist were silhouetted with the sun behind them, the fog making them seem unnaturally large.

  Then a sudden gust of wind tore a rent in the mist, and there they were: armoured horsemen, riding towards them. And behind those, rank upon rank of foot-soldiers. The fog was lifting now, the men drawing nearer, over five hundred of them. With each passing moment, more and more began to appear.

  ‘Looks like we found the rest of Valois’ army,’ Brewster remarked.

  ‘Oh, sweet Jesu!’ moaned Perkin Inglewood.

  The men kept on coming. Seeing Warwick’s column, they had turned slightly to meet it, approaching from the column’s right at an angle. They were four hundred yards away, moving briskly.

  At the head of the English column, Warwick seemed paralysed with indecision. ‘All right, we’ve found the enemy,’ hissed Jarrom, his voice taut with fear. ‘Why the devil don’t he order us to withdraw, and go and send in the cavalry?’

  Kemp said nothing. He was irritated by Jarrom’s grumbling, but only because it reflected his own fear and tension.

  Kemp could see the French column clearly now. The men were poorly armed and armoured, almost certainly peasant levies, possibly even raw recruits who had never been in battle. But they were fresh and clearly rested, and there must have been over a thousand of them, outnumbering Warwick’s column three to one as they continued to advance.

  Still Warwick seemed to dither. To retreat in such open country would have been fatal if the enemy had been mounted; but only the leaders of this column were on horseback, a handful of noblemen appointed to keep the levies in order. On the other hand, if Warwick meant to stand and fight, he was leaving it to the last moment before ordering his troops to form a defensive position.

  Then something astonishing happened. One of the noblemen riding at the head of the French column waved in Warwick’s direction. Warwick approached Northampton, and the two of them conversed briefly in terse, low tones. Then Warwick turned, and spoke to one of the men behind them. The man passed it back to the man behind him, and he to the man behind him, so that the order was passed down the whole length of the column towards Kemp and his companions, without the need for trumpet orders.

  Kemp stared at the French, less than three hundred yards away now and still advancing slowly but surely. ‘Hell’s teeth!’ he gasped as realisation finally dawned. ‘They think we’re French! They think we’re on their side!’

  ‘They won’t think that for ever,’ said Oakley.

  ‘Can’t they see our bows?’ gasped Jarrom. The distinctive longbow was almost unique to English and Welsh troops.

  Warwick’s order reached Preston’s platoon. ‘Ready your bows!’

  Kemp and his companions hurriedly stripped off their woollen bow-bags and began to tie their bowstrings on to the staves. Kemp went through the oft-practised motions almost mechanically, his eyes fixed on the approaching Frenchmen, now less than two hundred and fifty yards away. Any moment, he knew, they would realise their mistake, and attack.

  Warwick raised his marshal’s baton above his head and waved it so the gilt head glinted in the thin morning sun. ‘Nock!’ growled Preston, a command which echoed the whole length of Warwick’s column. Kemp had already nocked an arrow to his bow.

  The susurration of the serjeants’ commands may have reached the ears of the Frenchmen, or they may have seen the archers readying their bows; something made the leaders check and rein in their horses uncertainly.

  ‘Mark!’

  As it dawned on the Frenchmen that all was not well, their leaders hesitated. Only two hundred yards now separated the columns, optimum killing range for the longbow. Kemp and his companions chose their targets.

  ‘Draw!’

  The bending of two hundred bows merged into a single eldritch cr
eak, the broad shoulders of English yeomen drawing the fletchings of their arrows back to their ears.

  The French were in no doubt now. The leaders gestured frantically, trying to get their men to go back, but the untrained peasant levies responded slowly to their commands, bumping into one another in their panic.

  ‘And…’

  Warwick brought his baton down sharply.

  ‘… loose!’

  A cloud of arrows filled the air, soughing with eerie menace as they whirred towards their targets, arcing down to wreak havoc on the French column. The ranks seemed to stagger under the impact, men falling dead and dying on all sides as the steel arrowheads tore through flesh, muscle and sinew. Voices screamed in agony.

  ‘Nock! Mark! Draw!’

  Kemp and his companions little needed the orders. Experienced bowmen by now, they performed the motions with ruthless efficiency. After the repeated charges of French knights and men-at-arms, a mere thousand peasant levies held few fears for such battle-scarred veterans, and it was as if even those fears had been dispelled by their incredulity at their enemies’ mistake.

  ‘And… loose!’

  A second volley ripped through the French ranks, and more men fell screaming. The French tried to run, but tripped over one another in their panic. Those nearest the English ranks had over a hundred yards of open ground to cover before they would be out of range of the lethal arrows.

  ‘Loose at will!’

  Kemp and his companions were loosing arrows as fast as they could nock and draw. The air was thick with arrows, each man loosing his next shot before his last had found its target.

  ‘Stop shooting!’

  Kemp had almost exhausted the supply of arrows he kept under his belt anyway. Glancing to his left he saw that Warwick and Northampton had used the few moments’ grace the archers had bought them to form up the knights and mounted men-at-arms, and now they charged forward, lances couched, goading their horses into a canter. They rode in tight formation, the heavy horses’ hooves falling into a steady rhythm as they pounded the turf.