The first knight he’d pushed over was clambering noisily to his feet when the inn door crashed open and a dozen armoured men came out with swords ready. They saw one peasant dancing around an increasingly frustrated knight and some of them laughed and called to him.
‘Can you not catch the devil, Pierre? Try a lunge, man! Put his liver through!’
The knight in question didn’t respond, focused as he was on killing the peasant who had infuriated him.
Thomas was beginning to sweat. He saw that another of the first three had drawn a narrow bollock dagger and was trying to get round to his side, either to attack or grab him for Pierre to spit with the larger blade. Thomas could hear the man chuckling blearily to himself, almost too drunk to stand, yet inching closer every moment.
He heard Strange shout an order and Thomas threw himself to the ground.
‘He’s down!’ he heard someone shout delightedly in French. ‘Did he fall over? Pierre?’
The voice choked off as the air filled with shafts, a rushing, meaty sound as the knights were struck, punched backwards as arrows sent at full draw stopped in them. They roared and shouted, but the arrows kept coming, slotting through armour and mail links so that they spattered blood behind.
Thomas looked up to see the knight stalking him staring in shock at the feathered shafts standing out from his collarbone and through one of his thighs. The man made a sound of horror and tried to turn to face his unseen attackers. Thomas stood up behind him as the knight scrabbled round, dragging his damaged leg. Grimly, Thomas unsheathed his seax and stepped in close, taking a firm hold of the knight’s helmet. He wrenched the head back as the man spasmed in panic, revealing the links of the metal gorget protecting his throat. Using the heavy blade like a hammer, Thomas rammed it down with all the strength of his bow arm, breaking the softer iron and cutting deep before wrenching the seax back and forth. The knight stiffened, choking and weeping as Thomas stepped away and let him fall.
Most of the knights were down, though some of the wounded had gathered around one who must have been their leader. De Roche watched in terror as he saw dozens of men wearing dark clothes and carrying longbows step out of the side streets and clamber like spiders down from roofs. As a group they walked in, silent.
The innkeeper had come to his door, crossing himself in the presence of death. Thomas made an angry gesture for him to go inside and the man vanished back to the warmth and cheer of the inn.
‘Monsieur!’ de Roche called to him. ‘I can be held for ransom. You wish for gold?’
‘I have gold,’ Thomas replied.
De Roche stared around him as he and four battered knights were surrounded.
‘You understand the king of France is just a few miles away, monsieur? He and I are like brothers. Leave me alive and there will be no reprisals, not for this town.’
‘You make that promise? On your honour?’ Thomas asked.
‘Yes, on my honour! I swear it.’
‘And what about the rest of Maine? Will you leave that territory in peace? Will your king withdraw his men?’
De Roche hesitated. He wanted to agree, but it would be such an obvious lie that he could not speak. His voice lost its edge of desperation.
‘Monsieur, if I could arrange such a thing, I would, but it is not possible.’
‘Very well. God be with you, my lord.’
Thomas muttered an order to the archers around him even as the French baron cried out and raised his hands. One of the shafts went straight through his palm.
‘Check the bodies now,’ Thomas said, feeling old and tired. ‘Cut their throats to be sure. There can’t be witnesses.’
The men set about the task as they would have slaughtered pigs or geese. One or two of the knights kicked as they were held down, but it did not take long.
Rowan walked back to his father with his longbow in his hand. He looked very pale in the moonlight. Thomas clapped him on the shoulder.
‘Ugly work,’ he said.
Rowan looked out at the road full of dead men.
‘Yes. They’ll be angry when they hear,’ Rowan said.
‘Good. I want them angry. I want them so furious they can hardly think and I want them to charge at us the way they did at Agincourt. I was just a boy then, Rowan. Almost too young to carry the water casks for old Sir Hew. I remember it, though. That was the day I began to train with my bow, from then till now.’
London was simply overwhelming, too much to take in. Margaret had ridden with her new husband from the abbey at Titchfield to Blackheath, where she had seen the Thames for the first time and, in that moment, her first bloated body floating past on the surface.
The king’s party had been blessed with a clear day, with the sky a washed-out blue and the air very cold. The mayor and his aldermen had met her there, dressed in blue gowns with scarlet hoods. There was an air of gaiety and festival to the procession as Margaret was led by hand to a large wheeled litter, pulled by horses in white satin cloth. From that point, she went where they took her, though she looked down at her new husband riding at her side at every spare moment. The procession choked the road to a standstill as they reached the single massive bridge that spanned the river, joining the capital city to the southern counties and the coast. Margaret tried not to gape like a country girl, but London Bridge was incredible, almost a town in its own right that stretched across the water on whitewashed brick arches. Her litter passed dozens of shops and homes built on to the bridge itself. There were even public toilets and she blushed as she glimpsed boards hanging above the river, set with circular seats. Her litter moved on, revealing strangeness after strangeness, then halting on the centre of the bridge. Three-storey buildings pressed in on both sides, but a small area had been set as a stage and the filth underfoot had been covered over with clean rushes. Two women waited there, painted and dressed as Greek goddesses. Margaret stared as they approached and pressed garlands of flowers over her shoulders.
One of them began to declaim lines of verse over the noise of the crowd and Margaret had gathered only that it was in praise of peace before whips cracked and the scene was left behind. She craned round to see Yolande riding side-saddle with her husband Frederick. As their eyes met, both women were hard-pressed not to laugh in delight and wonder.
The mayor’s men marched on with them through the streets, accompanied by more people than Margaret had even known existed. The entire city seemed to have come to a halt to see her. Surely there could not be any men and women beyond those she saw. The crowds struggled against each other, climbing up buildings and sitting on the shoulders of friends to catch a glimpse of Margaret of England. The noise of their cheering could be felt on her skin, and her ears ached.
Margaret had not eaten for hours, that small detail forgotten in the vast organization of her trip through her husband’s capital city. The smell of the streets went some way to steal her appetite, but by the time she reached Westminster Abbey she was weak with hunger. The litter-horses were allowed to rest and Henry himself took her hand to guide her inside.
It was strange to feel the warmth of his hand on hers. She hadn’t been sure what to expect after the wedding in Titchfield, but in the days that followed she had never been left alone with the young king. William and Lord Somerset in particular seemed determined to whisk the king away from her at every opportunity. At night, she slept alone and when she had asked and then demanded to know where the king was, she was told by sheepish servants that he had ridden to the nearest chapel to spend the night in prayer. She was beginning to wonder if what her father said about the English was true. Not many Frenchwomen remained virgins a full week after marriage. Margaret gripped Henry’s hand tightly, so that he looked at her. She saw only happiness in his eyes as he walked her over the white stones into one of the oldest abbeys in England.