The evening peace vanished in noise.
But first there was light. Dark light, Hook thought later, a stab of dark light, flame-black red light that licked like a hell-serpent’s tongue from an earthwork the French had dug close to one of their gaunt catapults. That tongue of wicked fire was visible for an instant before it was obliterated in a thundercloud of dense black smoke that billowed sudden, and then the noise came, an ear-punching blow of sound that shook the heavens to be followed by another crack, almost as loud, as something struck the city wall.
The wall shook. Hook’s bow toppled and clattered onto the stones. Birds were screaming as they flew from the flame, smoke and lingering noise. The sun was gone, hidden by the black cloud, and Hook stared and was convinced, at least for a moment, that a crack had opened in the earth and that the fires of hell had vomited their way to the surface.
‘Sweet bloody Christ!’ an archer said in awe.
‘Was wondering when that would happen,’ another archer said in disgust. ‘A gun,’ he explained to the first man, ‘have you never seen a gun?’
‘Never.’
‘You’ll see them now,’ the second man said grimly.
Hook had never seen a gun either, and he flinched when a second one fired to add its filthy smoke to the summer sky. Next day another four cannons added their fire and the six French guns did far more damage than the four big wooden machines. The catapults were inaccurate and their jagged boulders often missed the ramparts and dropped into the city to crush houses that started burning as their kitchen fires were scattered, but the gun-stones ate steadily at the city wall, which was already in bad repair. It took only two days for the outer face of the wall to crumble into the wide fetid ditch, and then the gunners systematically widened the breach as the Burgundians countered by making a semicircular barricade behind the disintegrating wall.
Each gun fired three times a day, their shots as regular as the bells of a monastery calling men to prayer. The Burgundians had their own gun, which had been mounted on a southern bastion in the expectation that the French would attack from the Paris road, and it took two days to drag the weapon to the western ramparts where it was slung up onto the roof of the gate-tower. Hook was fascinated by its tube, which was twice as long as his bowstave and hooped like an ale-pot. The tube and its bindings were made of dark pitted iron and rested on a squat wooden carriage. The gunners were Dutchmen who spent a long time watching the enemy guns and finally aimed their tube at one of those French cannon and then set about the laborious task of loading their machine. Gunpowder was put into the barrel with a long-handled ladle, then tamped tight with a cloth-wrapped rammer. Soft loam was added next. The loam was puddled in a wide wooden pail, rammed onto the powder, then left to dry as the gunners sat in a circle and played dice. The gun-stone, a boulder chipped into a crude ball, waited beside the tube until the chief gunner, a portly man with a forked beard, decided the loam was dry enough, and only then was the stone pushed down the long hooped barrel. A wooden wedge was shoved after it and hammered into place to keep the shaped boulder tight against the loam and powder. A priest sprinkled holy water on the gun and said a prayer as the Dutchmen used long levers to make a final small adjustment to the tube’s aim.
‘Stand back, boy,’ Sergeant Smithson told Hook. The centenar had deigned to leave the Goose tavern to watch the Dutchmen fire their weapon. A score of other men had also arrived, including the Sire de Bournonville who called encouragement to the gunners. None of the spectators stood close to the gun, but instead watched as if the black tube were a wild beast that could not be trusted. ‘Good morning, Sir Roger,’ Smithson said, knuckling his forehead towards a tall, arrow-thin man. Sir Roger Pallaire, commander of the English contingent, ignored the greeting. He had a narrow, beak-nosed face with a lantern jaw, dark hair and, in the company of his archers, the expression of a man forced to endure the stench of a latrine.
The portly Dutchman waited till the priest had finished his prayer, then he pushed a stripped quill into a small hole that had been drilled into the gun’s breech. He used a copper funnel to fill the quill with powder, squinted one more time down the length of the barrel, then stepped to one side and held out a hand for a long, burning taper. The priest, the only man other than the artillerymen to be close to the weapon, made the sign of the cross and spoke a quick blessing, then the chief gunner touched the flame to the powder-filled quill.
The gun exploded.
Instead of sending its stone ball screaming across to the French siege-works the cannon vanished in a welter of smoke, flying metal and shredded flesh. The five gunners and the priest were killed instantly, turned to blood-red mist and ribboned meat. A man-at-arms screamed and writhed as red-hot metal sliced into his belly. Sir Roger, who had been standing next to the screaming man, stepped fastidiously away and grimaced at the blood that had spattered across the badge on his surcoat. That badge showed three hawks on a green field. ‘Tonight, Smithson,’ Sir Roger spoke amidst the blood-reeking smoke that writhed about the rampart, ‘you will meet me after sundown in Saint Antoine-le-Petit’s church. You and your whole company.’
‘Yes, sir, yes,’ Smithson said faintly, ‘of course, Sir Roger.’ The sergeant was staring at the ruined cannon. The first ten feet of the shattered barrel lay canted and ripped open, while the breech had been torn into jagged shards of smoking metal. Part of a hoop and a man’s hand lay by Hook’s feet while the gunners, hired at great expense, were nothing but eviscerated carcasses. The Sire de Bournonville, his jupon spattered with blood and scraps of flesh, made the sign of the cross, while derisive jeers sounded from the French siege lines.
‘We must plan for the assault,’ Sir Roger said, apparently oblivious to the wet horror a few paces away.
‘Very good, Sir Roger,’ Smithson said. The centenar scooped a jellied mess from his belt. ‘A Dutchman’s goddam brains,’ he said in disgust, flicking the gob towards Sir Roger who had turned and now strode away.
Sir Roger, with three men-at-arms all wearing his badge of the three hawks, met the English and Welsh archers of the Soissons garrison in the church of Saint Antoine-le-Petit just after sunset. Sir Roger’s surcoat had been washed, though the bloodstains were still faintly visible on the green linen. He stood in front of the altar, lit by guttering rushlights that burned feebly in brackets mounted on the church’s pillars, and his face still bore the distant look of a man pained to be in his present company. ‘Your job,’ he said, without any preamble once the eighty-nine archers had settled on the floor of the nave, ‘will be to defend the breach. I cannot tell you when the enemy will assault, but I can assure you it will be soon. I trust you will repel any such assault.’
‘Oh we will, Sir Roger,’ Smithson put in helpfully, ‘rely on it, sir!’
Sir Roger’s long face shuddered at the comment. Rumour in the English contingent said that he had borrowed money from Italian bankers in expectation of inheriting an estate from an uncle, but the land had passed to a cousin and Sir Roger had been left owing a fortune to unforgiving Lombards. The only hope of paying the debt was to capture and ransom a rich French knight, which was presumably why he had sold his services to the Duke of Burgundy. ‘In the event,’ he said, ‘that you fail to keep the enemy out of the city, you are to gather here, in this church.’ Those words caused a stir as men frowned and looked at each other. If they failed to defend the breach and lost the new defences behind it, then they expected to retreat to the castle.
‘Sir Roger?’ Smithson ventured hesitantly.
‘I had not