12 At sea off the Flemish coast, June 1340

12

At sea off the Flemish coast, June 1340

Standing beside the King on the deck of the Thomas facing the might of the French fleet, Thomas flexed his shoulders and opened and closed his hands, preparing for battle. Some men were fidgeting and jittery with excitement and fear. Some prayed on their knees and said their rosaries. Others busied themselves with their equipment or made boastful jests. And some kept their thoughts sealed in silence.

Despite moving to loosen his muscles, Thomas was calm and focused. There was going to be a battle, a hard one they could not afford to lose. Many said the odds were stacked against them, but Thomas only saw challenges to overcome. His own response before and during combat was one of heightened clarity and awareness and was a reason for his position as an elite knight of the royal household. When his mind was this focused, there was no room to pick at the sore spot of his clandestine marriage to Jeanette. Everything but now could wait.

Beside him, Otto too was still and absorbed. They had fought side by side for so many years that there was nothing to say and nothing to polish for it had all been perfected on the practice field.

The English banners rippled in the wind, the lilies of France quartered with the lions of England, streaming out. The sun was behind them, bright and high in the summer sky and to their advantage, since the hordes of crossbowmen lining the decks of the French ships would be squinting into the light when they shot at the English.

The sky was as clear as fine blue cloth. Gentle whitecaps scudded the waves driven by a good breeze from the northwest, which was exactly what the English needed for their approach. The King looked up at the sun and the moment of waiting strung out like a thin silver wire. Lined up in three rows, the French ships barred the entrance to the harbour of Sluys with the foremost row comprised of the largest galleys and cogs with extra planks nailed to the sides to increase the height and prevent easy boarding. The ships were chained together to form a floating barrier to prevent the English from breaking through and looked formidable. Edward's former flagship the Christopher , which had been captured in a raid by the French some months ago, had pride of place in the front ranks. Edward regarded the sight as an incentive, a challenge, and an insult.

‘Well,' he said to Thomas, ‘what say you, Master Holland?'

Thomas smiled. ‘I say, sire, that they are like a shoal of fish and that we shall soon for the expenditure of a little effort have netted a very fine catch.'

Edward's lips twitched. ‘I believe that is a clear assessment. Let every man do his best and look to his post. Master Crabbe.'

The King signalled to his ship's master. John Crabbe was a redoubtable, leather-faced warrior in his mid-sixties but still hale and vigorous. He had a long life of piracy behind him and had fought with the Scots against the King in the past, but Edward had persuaded him to change his allegiance, and Crabbe, intent on a secure future for himself, had entered Edward's service.

A broad-chested yeoman raised an ivory oliphant to his lips and blew the approach. The sound of the horn blared out across the waves and was taken up by the other ships. The anchors rose dripping from the sea, and the English ships sailed in majesty out of the sun towards the might of the much larger French navy.

As their formation neared the French lines, Thomas drew his sword in a silver shiver. The royal vessel was equipped with fighting men and archers in the castles atop prow and stern. Either side they were flanked by ships composed mostly of bowmen, supplied with vast quantities of arrows. The French favoured the use of the crossbow – an instrument to be feared, but the numerical advantage of missiles and range was with the swifter English bows. Thomas had often watched his own Northamptonshire archers at their training – had even joined them at practice. English bows could loose ten arrows in the time it took to load and shoot two from a crossbow. And the French arbalesters would be shooting sun-blind.

The breeze was steady but gentle, and Crabbe and the other ship masters constantly shouted orders to adjust position. The great square sails came up and down along the line, and sometimes anchors were deployed to keep the English ships in formation. As the distance closed between the two sides, Thomas could hear the French trumpets and horns blaring out, not so much to accompany attack as to signal their own positioning. The chained ships at the front of the line were fouling each other's advance, and the high seaboards made them unwieldy and slow to manoeuvre.

At a signal from the King, their own trumpets blared the attack, and the soldiers roared threats and battle cries, adding to the cacophony.

‘The French are mad,' Otto said. ‘Why didn't they make for open water and then carve in among us? They have twice our number, but they have hamstrung themselves.'

‘They have an experienced commander but I suspect they've overruled him because he is Genoese, not French. Good advantage for us though.' Thomas grinned wolfishly.

Steadily, surely, the French sailed within range of the English longbows. Thomas signalled to the archers clustered in their wooden fighting castles fore and aft to string their bows, and strung his own of Spanish yew, as did Otto, the King and other knights, for every arrow at this opening stage before the ships closed together would count. Samson, one of Thomas's archers from the Holland manor at Broughton, gave him a gap-toothed smile as he handed over a sheaf of twenty arrows, bodkin-pointed and fletched with goose feathers.

As the ships closed across the water, the shout went up to nock the arrows in the bowstring. Then, ‘Draw!'

Thomas pulled back until his arm was level with his right ear and his vambraced left arm extended straight. All along the English front line of vessels, throngs of archers performed the same task. Closer . . . closer, the summer sea ploughed by a hundred and fifty keels.

‘Loose!'

Thomas released all the pent-up tension from his arm into the blazing midsummer sky and was already setting the next arrow to the nock as thousands of razored tips sped in a vicious hornet-storm towards the leading French ships. Nock, draw, loose; nock, draw, loose. The arrows plummeted in a brutal hail upon the tightly packed French who had no chance of manoeuvring out of the way. So thick was the arrow storm, so close the ships, that the missiles diving from the sky could not miss. The built-up sides of the French vessels were no defence, and neither were the crossbowmen, hampered in their shooting by the sun's glare and the deadly hail. Some of the bigger French vessels possessed stone throwers, but they had to be operated by crews who were taking cover, and their aim was inaccurate.

Thomas rapidly shot his twenty arrows, and then another twenty. As they drew closer to the French ships the archers began directing their aim at specific soldiers rather than shooting high. However, they were wary themselves now, because they were within range of the crossbows, and not every French archer had fallen. Yet still their assault continued until they were within thirty yards of the French front line. Then it was time to discard the longbow, draw weapons and prepare the grapnels for boarding.

The reinforced strakes of the former English ship the Saint George reared up before them as the spiked ropes snaked out and drew her breast to breast with the Thomas. In the crow's nests, the English archers were ready to pick off or pin down anyone trying to hack the boarding ropes.

Thomas and Otto were first on deck, climbing swiftly up the nets attached to the grapnels and over the top. Thomas ducked a blow aimed at his torso and downed his man. An English marksman brought down another before he could cleave Thomas's head, and then Otto was beside him, and the deadly dance began.

Thomas ploughed into the thick of the brawl, and as the battle grew harder and ever more desperate, the steelier and steadier he became. The alchemy of sword and long dagger in tandem. The kick, the punch, the smooth twist and the pivot. He knew every move, every permutation. He could finely judge what each opponent would do, and linked to that judgement was pure, swift instinct. Yet, despite his pinpoint focus, he did not lose the wider perspective, and knew what was happening around him. He was aware of the King fighting to his left with household knights Walter Manny and William Burgesh either side.

Edward missed his parry and took a slash to his leg, and then another to his arm, but Manny reached him and cut the French soldier down. Thomas had disengaged and backed to protect the King, but Edward waved his sword. ‘I am all right!' he panted, breathing hard, teeth bared. ‘Go on, go on!'

Thomas and Otto plunged back into the fray until no French were left aboard the ship, at least none that breathed. Henry de la Haye, his surcoat blood-soaked, handed Thomas the English flag, and Thomas cast the fabric over his shoulder and scaled the rigging to the crow's nest, where he tore down the French Oriflamme banner and let the quartered English lions snap out in the wind, to a resounding cheer from the deck.

The battle raged on throughout the long summer afternoon. As the sun slipped in the sky and the colours of dusk smudged the horizon, the English continued to press forward with relentless determination. The ships of the French front line had either been seized or had fled, and Edward ordered crews from his own second row to take the captured French vessels and push forward to demolish the next French line. One by one English banners flapped in the breeze as ship after ship succumbed, and the Flemish, watching from the shore, put to sea in their own craft and turned on the French like vultures at a lion's kill.

By sunset, the French third line had broken and scattered, and Edward's smaller fleet had recaptured many more English ships including the Christopher. The decks of the great galley were awash with blood and arrows. From the forecastle, Thomas directed his archer Samson and two of his companions to gather up the shafts and drop them in an empty barrel to be sorted for reuse. A detail of men at arms was picking up the French dead, stripping them of valuables, and casting them over the side. Thomas gazed into the heavy green water, no longer blue as the sun declined in the sky. He could not see any bodies, but knew many would float in the coming days and that thousands were now sinking down in the fathoms under the ship's keels.

‘The fish will all speak French, the feast we have given them,' Otto said, joining him. The vambrace on his left arm was cut almost through. ‘And then if we catch the fish and eat them, shall we have devoured our enemy, do you think?'

Thomas snorted. ‘You have some strange fancies at times, and not ones I want to consider when eating my dinner!' He gestured to the vambrace. ‘Are you hurt?'

Otto shook his head. ‘One of the bastards had a good try, but this was the only casualty. You?'

‘Not a scratch,' Thomas said, although he knew he would have a few bruises when it came to the accounting. ‘The King took that cut to the thigh though. If we failed in anything, it was in protecting him.' But then Edward was not a child to be constantly watched and coddled. He knew his own mind and the risks involved, and the injury had not looked severe.

He slapped his hand down on the top of the wooden castle hoarding and gazed at the sea of English banners waving against the blood-red sky. ‘We have destroyed the French king's fleet and the army he was assembling to invade England.' He shook his head in wonder at the sheer enormity of their achievement. There would be booty and glory for all.

‘God was with us,' Otto said, ‘as He was not with the French.'

‘And with our archers,' Thomas replied, remembering the death rain of arrows whistling over the sea as he watched the soldiers at their work on the deck, where the fallen shafts lay as thick as floor-straw in places. He stooped and picked one up, barred with trimmed goose feathers and a sharp bodkin head. ‘This is what won the battle,' he said. ‘These kept them pinned down – and their own folly. Had they sailed out to meet us, we would now be the ones at the bottom of the sea.' It was a sobering thought. How so many small moments and decisions could amalgamate into a force strong enough to turn the wheel of fate.

Edward spent the night on the Christopher. The tally of the dead amounted to five hundred English and over ten thousand French, with a hundred and sixty-six French ships captured – more than the total English fleet – and twenty-four sunk. It had been a triumph and a rout.

Despite his injuries, the King was in good spirits. His chirurgeon had cleaned and stitched his thigh wound, and smeared it with honey. Edward sat with his leg propped on a stool to aid healing while his scribes toiled around him, writing news of the victory; a messenger had already set out to the Queen to inform her of their success.

Thomas and Otto made their report and returned to the Thomas. Now in dock, they could hear the roistering in the drinking houses on shore. Men capered and caroused on the decks of the captured ships, drunk on wine and the exhilaration of being alive to celebrate, and with the promise of booty to come.

The brothers sat down either side of an upturned tub to consume roast capon and a clear French wine purloined from the Saint George.

‘Are you going to tell the King about your marriage?' Otto asked. ‘You could do it now while he is in a good mood about the victory.'

Thomas shook his head. ‘I need to speak with Jeanette first, and he has other matters on his mind as well as contending with his wound. Let it wait a better time.' He was procrastinating – he knew the King would not respond well whenever he broached the matter. ‘I shall tell him when the time is right,' he said, to assuage his conscience, ‘but if you want to go ashore and celebrate, do not let me stop you.'

‘Without you?'

Thomas shrugged ruefully. ‘I have to count how many arrows we have salvaged, and what equipment needs replacement or repair. Henry will go with you of a certainty.'

‘You could do that tomorrow in daylight – it would be far easier.' Otto pushed aside his dish and stood up.

‘Perhaps, but I know how easy it would be to get drunk and wake up lying across some harlot with a thousand demons banging hammers inside my skull. Besides, I have a reputation to uphold now that must stand me in good stead with the King.'

‘As you please,' Otto said. ‘At least you know what you'll be missing.'

Standing among the Queen's ladies, Jeanette watched King Edward return to Ghent in triumph amid a fanfare of silver trumpets and horn blasts. News of the miraculous victory at Sluys had spread far and wide, and the city was decked out to greet the returning heroes.

The glossy coats of the horses shone with starbursts of sunlight, and the armour of the knights and attendants twinkled and flashed, dazzling the eyes. Harnesses jingled, and horseshoes struck blue sparks on the cobbles. The supply carts rumbled behind, piled with booty from hundreds of French ships.

Positioned in the middle of the women, Jeanette stood with Katerine of Salisbury, who was watching her closely for any signs of infraction. The Countess's mood was pensive and irritable for her husband was still a prisoner of the French with his ransom to be arranged.

Jeanette sought Thomas in the throng. They had heard at court of the King's injury and that he had been resting while the captured ships were unloaded and the victory consolidated, but he had sent messages daily, informing the Queen of his progress. Jeanette was glad for the victory, and that Thomas was alive – news would have come to them in the daily dispatches if he wasn't – but she was deflated and afraid of the news she had for him.

She saw him riding not far from the King with Otto at his side, the brothers clad in the green and scarlet livery of the household knights. He leaned in to reply to a comment made by one of the men, but then raised his head, searching the crowd, and like an arrow finding its mark, unerringly caught her gaze. Jeanette hastily looked down, unsure of how to respond. They no longer needed to be married. He could ride away without commitment. The only people who knew were their servants and the young friar, and they were all sworn to secrecy. But she didn't want it to be an ending.

Katerine of Salisbury had stuck to her like a limpet to a rock ever since making her drink that tisane and nursing her in the time afterwards. A week ago, her monthly bleed had come as usual, and Katerine had pronounced with satisfaction that all was now functioning as it should. Jeanette had barely left the Queen's apartment during the last six weeks, and when she did, was so closely chaperoned that there had been no opportunity to send word to Thomas. Her life had become a prison.