A Midnight Battle
Night had fallen over Calais on New Year’s Eve, cold, gloomy,
threatening; and around a blazing fire in an upper chamber of the great
tower flanking the Boulogne Gate were gathered a group of stalwart
young Englishmen in full armour, whose silver spurs told that they had
already attained the rank of esquires, though they were not yet “dubbed
knights.”
“Marry, these Frenchmen will have such a regale this night as they
little expect,” said a tall youth, rubbing his sinewy hands gleefully.
“We English are hospitable folk, and care not how many guests come to
taste our New Year’s cheer; but methinks these gallants will find it
somewhat hard for their French teeth!”
“They are minded, doubtless,” laughed another, “to break their fast in
Calais town on the New Year morn; and so indeed they shall—as
prisoners!”
“Under whose banner fight we to-night, brother Hugo?” asked a slim,
handsome lad of his neighbour, whose comely face was a singularly exact
copy of his own.
“Under the pennon of Sir Walter de Manny,” replied his double, “a good
and gentle knight, who is ever to be found where hard blows are going.
Under such a one we may well hope to win spurs of gold. Methinks we
have been esquires long enough—ha, brother Alured?”
The speakers were no other than the twin-brothers, Alured and Hugo de
Claremont, who were greatly altered since they had sat at meat with Sir
Yvon du Guesclin, years before.
Still retaining their wonderful likeness to each other, the dainty
boy-pages had grown into tall and stalwart cavaliers, who had proved
their courage in many a hard fray. On the field of Crecy they had been
made esquires; and they now hoped, young as they were, to win
knighthood in the coming fight.
“Would that the fray could begin at once!” cried Alured, impatiently,
“ere our honoured uncle hath time to damp us with one of his wonted
homilies against over-boldness! Methinks it would fit him better to
urge us on than to warn us back.”
In fact, their good uncle, Sir Simon Harcourt, was never weary of
warning his hot-blooded nephews against rashly running into
danger—which was very kind of him, considering that their death would
have made him one of the richest landed proprietors in England. But, by
some unlucky chance, the good knight’s admonitions were always given in
such a way as to irritate the fiery youths into perilling their lives
more recklessly than ever.
“Now, I bethink me, Claremont,” broke in one of his comrades—“I say
not ‘Alured’ or ‘Hugo,’ for never can I tell to which of the two I
speak——”
A general laugh greeted the jest (such as it was) in which the twins
good-humouredly joined.
“I say, then,” resumed the speaker, “that it is full time for the
fulfilment of the prophecy concerning you twain, which was to come to
pass in a year and a day.”
“A prophecy?” echoed three or four voices at once.
“Marry, even so—and a rare one,” laughed Alured de Claremont. “I thank
thee, Beauchamp, for reminding me of it, for in sooth I had forgotten
it myself. This is the tale, comrades, if ye care to hear it—
“Just a year agone to-day, my uncle rode out hence with a part of his
train (among whom were my brother and I) to see if the Frenchmen were
stirring, and if there were any sign of their coming against us from
St. Omer. All day we rode on without seeing aught—for the whole
country-side was wasted till it lay utterly desolate—neither house nor
barn, neither man nor beast.
“At last, just as the sun was going down, two men came toward us, the
one habited like a grey friar, the other in the dress of a lay brother
of the order; and the moment we caught sight of the monk’s face, we all
knew him at once (for, in truth, he is not one to be lightly forgotten)
for that same Brother Michael whom men call the Pilgrim of God, and
whom we had seen long since at Dinan, where he saved from the boiling
cauldron one doomed to die.
“Our uncle rode forward to greet him, and ask for news; and while they
spake together, Hugo and I noted that this lay brother who was with him
had the look of a simpleton, and was, belike, some crazy fellow whom
the good monk had taken to him for charity’s sake. So we began to make
our sport with him, asking him jestingly of this and that; but he
looked on us right gravely and sadly, as if such game liked him not,
and then he spake to us in rhyme, like any masquer in the show of St.
George and the Dragon. How ran the words, Hugo?”
And his brother repeated the following lines—
“Give ear, ye twain who mock at me,
And heed the words I say;
For every word shall come to pass
Within a year and a day.
“One night ye two together shall go
To hunt on a waste wild moor;
And out of twain shall one come back,
And his hands shall not be pure.
“His hands shall not be pure, I wot,
But stained with ruddy smear,
With ruddy smear of good red blood
That is not the blood of deer!”
A chilling silence followed the gloomy prediction, every word of which
all the listeners (reckless jesters as they were) firmly believed. At
last Beauchamp said—
“And this befell, say’st thou, just a year agone to-day? Then must the
bode be fulfilled ere to-morrow’s sunset! Now, God forbid it should
mean that one of ye twain must die in to-night’s battle!”
“Why not?” cried Hugo, recklessly. “How can a man die better, since die
he must? Let who will die or live, England shall win the day! Fill yet
another cup of Gascon wine, comrades (one thing, at least, in which
France hath the better of us), and let us drink to the fortune of
England!”
The rest answered the pledge, but less heartily than usual; for this
sudden burst of wild gaiety from that quiet and sober lad seemed to
them all an even more sinister omen than had he been silent and
dejected; and Beauchamp whispered gloomily to his next neighbour that
Hugo must surely be “fey” (doomed).
The same confident assurance of victory in the coming fray filled the
hearts of the sturdy English archers and men-at-arms in the guard-room
below.
“Let ’em come if they will, these braggart Frenchmen!” cried Harry
Woodstall, of Winchester. “They are great at boasting, but big words
break no bones. If they have a mind to taste our English steel once
more, e’en let ’em, though methinks they had a bellyful on’t on Crecy
Field—hey, Dickon?”
“By’r lady, thou say’st sooth, Hal. Ha, lads! I pity such of ye as were
not there, for ’twas a right goodly fray! The French had archers, too,
forsooth; a scum of Genoa rogues with arbalests (cross-bows) who
thought, beshrew their hearts! to match us, and came on with a leap and
a fell cry, as if to scare us like children with their clamour. Aha!
then we let them see how the grey goose-wing can fly! Ye would have
thought it snowed, lads, so thick flew our shafts among ’em. Down went
Genoa bowman and French man-at-arms, down went belted knight and
haughty noble, before the lusty cloth-yard shafts of Old England. When
the broil was over, there lay dead on the French side thrice the number
of our whole array, all told; and scarce a foot-archer of us all but
had two or three prisoners, insomuch that we were in some sort
constrained to kill such as were not worth ransoming, not knowing what
else to do with them. I myself took a gay-plumed popinjay of Provence,
be-ringed and be-jewelled like any court-lady, whose ransom kept my
gipsire (purse) full for many a day.”
“And thy mouth too, I’ll be sworn, Dickon Greenleaf,” chuckled Mat
Bowyer, of Kendal. “Trust thee for knowing where good cheer is to be
had, whether to eat or to drink!”
“I were in luck, truly, were my mouth ever as full of good cheer as
thine of foolish chatter, Mat Bowyer,” retorted Nottingham Dick; and
this sledge-hammer wit drew a general laugh from the audience, to whose
capacity it was just suited.
“Long live our bold King Ned!” shouted Woodstall, “and may he ever have
some good war in hand!”
A score of deep voices hoarsely echoed this humane toast.
“Amen!” said Mat Bowyer; “he is the king for a bold fellow to thrive
under.”
“Ay, marry is he!” cried Dickon Greenleaf, heartily. “There is but one
thing about him that likes me not; methinks a king of England should
speak good plain English in place of yon mincing French, which is
fitter for a magpie’s mouth than a man’s.”
“What? what?” broke in several voices at once. “Rule thy tongue better,
Dickon, lest it breed thee pain. Know’st thou not that it is treason to
say aught against the king’s grace?”
“I care not,” said the bold archer, sturdily; “I bear an English
tongue, that dares speak the truth before King Edward himself—God
bless him!—and it is no treason, I trow, to wish that his grace had
the luck to be able to speak his mind in honest English, like
ourselves.”
“And were I to say, ‘Hang me up yon malapert knave for speaking ill of
his betters,’ would that be English enow for thee?” asked a deep voice
behind.
Dickon turned with a start, and saw (or thought he saw) through a
loop-hole just over his head, a face, the sight of which seemed to turn
him to stone, and all his comrades likewise.
As it vanished, the spell was broken, and Greenleaf and half a dozen
more flew through the doorway, and up three or four steps of the
winding stone stair beyond. Then they stopped short in utter
bewilderment, for no one was there!
“Get ye to your prayers, lads, one and all of ye!” said Dickon,
solemnly, as he crossed himself with a trembling hand, “for the foul
fiend himself hath been among us in the likeness of our king!”
It was drawing toward midnight, when a long line of shadowy horsemen
came gliding silently as spectres (for every hoof was muffled) over the
wide waste of bare moor between Calais and St. Omer; and ever and anon
a faint gleam of steel, breaking the tomb-like blackness of the gloomy
winter night, showed that these ghostly riders were all armed to the
teeth.
“Little dream these English hogs of the New Year pageant that we have
in store for them!” muttered a stalwart figure in the front rank, no
other than Alain de St. Yvon, the eldest of Bertrand du Guesclin’s
swaggering cousins, who were now knights of renown, and formed part of
the train with which Sir Geoffroi de Chargny, the French commandant of
St. Omer, was hastening to seize (as he hoped) the great fortress, for
the betrayal of which he had covenanted with a deeper traitor than
himself.
“Pity our good cousin, Ugly Bertrand, were not here to-night,” said the
second brother, Raoul, with a coarse sneer; “he would have a better
chance to win the knightly spurs that he still lacks, than by scuffling
with hired spearmen in the Breton forests.”
“And if he _did_ get his nose chopped off, or his eye knocked out by a
chance blow in the _melée_,” added Huon, the youngest, “it could scarce
make him uglier than he is!”
“Young sirs,” broke in a deep, mellow voice just behind them, “it is
ill done to speak scorn of the absent, or to vaunt when the work is but
begun. Trust me, ere this night is over, ye may all have more cause to
pray than to jest.”
None of the young knights made any answer to the rebuke, fiercely as
they all chafed under it, for the speaker was Sir Eustace de
Ribeaumont, the best knight in all France at that day.
They were now nearing the entrance of the narrow stone causeway that
then formed, on that side, the only approach to Calais. Here it behoved
them to ride slowly and warily; for on either side stretched, for
several miles, a black and horrible morass, half swamp and half
quicksand, in the fathomless depths of which death lay lurking to
devour any ill-fated wretch who might fall, or be thrust, off the firm
road above.
Just ere they reached this perilous isthmus, Sir Eustace halted to
advise the detaching of a strong force to hold the bridge of Neuillet
in their rear, and thus secure a line of retreat if anything went
wrong. From any other man, the fiery De Chargny, in his overweening
confidence of success, would have laughed this cautious counsel to
scorn; but the advice of such a captain as De Ribeaumont was not to be
slighted, and he unwillingly agreed.
The dismal swamp was safely passed, and, just on the stroke of
midnight, they halted at last before the Boulogne Gate of Calais, and
saw above them the dim outline of the great tower, dark and silent as a
tomb. Above or below there was neither sign nor sound of life, and the
gate was still fast shut.
“Yon loitering Lombard is in no haste to open to us,” growled De
Chargny. “Were he half as cold as I am he would make better speed.”
“No doubt he is making sure that the crowns are in full tale, and that
no light one hath slipped in by chance,” sneered Sir Pepin de Werre.
“These Lombards are ever careful folk with money.”
“Patience, fair sirs,” said De Ribeaumont; “it is not yet midnight.
Hark! there sounds the first stroke even now.”
Slowly and solemnly the twelve strokes of midnight boomed through the
ghostly stillness, like the knell of those who were about to die.
Hardly had the last toll echoed through the silent town, when there
came a clang and a rattle as the gate was flung open, and, with a
deafening shout of “Manny to the rescue!” a mass of armed men burst
from the gloomy archway with the rush of a mighty wave right into the
midst of the startled French!
Then began a fight such as the oldest warrior there had never seen. In
the depth of the cold black gloom, with death hungering for them on
either side of the narrow path on which they fought, the contending
hosts closed and battled. To and fro swayed the fight like a stormy
sea, “each man,” in the grim words of the old chronicler, “doing such
work as he might in the darkness”—friend often striking friend instead
of foe, and death coming blindly, no one knew whence or how.
Brave Harry Woodstall, whose stout steel cap and harder skull availed
nothing against the thunderbolt blow that cut him down, never knew that
he had got his death from the noblest sword in France, that of Eustace
de Ribeaumont. Poor young Beauchamp, who had hoped to win fame and
knightly spurs by measuring himself with De Chargny, gained his wish
and his death-wound with it. By the hand of Sir John Chandos, “the
flower of England’s chivalry,” fell gay young Pepin de Werre, laughing
as he died. Sturdy Mat Bowyer was smitten through bone and brain by
Alain de St. Yvon, but the next moment his slayer fell dead beside him,
crushed by the terrible mace of Walter de Manny; and as Raoul sprang
forward to avenge his brother, Sir Peter Audley cut him down.
At the same instant Hugo de Claremont, who had come hand-to-hand with
the third brother, Huon (little dreaming that the foe who faced him so
stoutly was the blithe guest with whom he had once sat at meat in
Motte-Brun Castle), was beaten to his knees, and would in a moment more
have been crushed to death by the trampling feet around him, had not
his brother Alured and two stout men-at-arms dragged him out by main
force.
In truth, the peril of the sword was the least of all the dangers that
the combatants braved that night. More than one brave knight on either
side was trampled to death in the press; and many a gallant youth who
had come into the fray that night with bright eye and bounding heart,
eager to win fame and honour, was hurled headlong over the edge of the
causeway into the deadly quagmire below, to sink inch by inch in its
foul black slime and perish miserably, unaided and unknown.
So, amid clashing steel and streaming blood, shouts, groans, yells,
curses, the moans of dying men, and the shrieks of those who were
perishing in the horrible pit below, came in that New Year morn. A
strange celebration, in truth, of the blessed season of “peace on earth
and good-will towards men”! but in an age when ceaseless bloodshed was
held the only occupation worthy of Christian men, and when Christian
kings sang praise to God for the destruction of thousands of their
fellow-men by sword and fire and famine, that midnight butchery was “a
very goodly and gentle passage of arms”!
All at once a sheet of flame leaped up through the blackness from the
beacon-tower; and beneath its blood-red glare every feature of that
wild scene started into terrible distinctness—the dark towers and
battlements of the grim old fortress, the anxious watchers that crowded
them, the dim expanse of sea behind, the whirl of furious faces and
struggling arms and flashing weapons that filled the causeway, the
black morass on either side, and the wild waste of dreary moor beyond
all—a picture which no one who saw it ever forgot.
The light revealed that the battle was going against France; for though
the French fought as bravely as men could do, all their valour was
rendered vain by the complete surprise, the suddenness and fury of the
attack, the superiority of prepared men to unprepared ones, and the
narrowness of the causeway, which made their greater numbers not only
useless, but harmful. Already they were beginning to recoil: but their
stern leader, De Chargny, furious at being thus tricked and baffled,
fought like a tiger, and, aided by the terrible arm of Eustace de
Ribeaumont, still bore up the war.
Just as the beacon flamed up, Sir Eustace, while hacking his way
through that living jungle like a woodman slashing down brushwood,
suddenly came face to face with a tall man in plain armour, whose
prowess had already made him remarked alike by friend and foe, though
he bore neither badge nor blazon.
“To me, Sir Eustace!” cried the stranger; “I would fain try my strength
with thine.”
“I know thee not,” replied Sir Eustace, “but all such guests are
welcome to De Ribeaumont. Come on, and let God send the victory as He
will.”
Without another word the two closed, and for some moments thrust and
parry, stroke and guard, followed each other as thunder follows
lightning. At last the French sword fell like a thunderbolt on the
stranger’s crest, beating him down on his knee; but ere Sir Eustace
could second his blow, the other sprang lightly up once more.
“St. Denis! thou art a good knight!” cried the French hero, with all
the chivalrous admiration of one brave man for another. “Wilt thou
yield thee to my mercy?”
“‘Yield’ is a word that I know not,” said the unknown, simply; and to
it they went again like giants.
But a rush of fighting men parted them, and the stranger, reeling
beneath another tremendous blow, would have been thrust off the
causeway to die in the foul morass below, had not a strong arm upheld
him, while a gruff voice said in his ear—
“Hold up, your worship, and to it again; yon Frenchman is a good blade,
but you will match him yet.”
“Thanks for thy timely aid, my brave lad of England,” said the knight.
“But for thee, I had been fairly sped. By what name shall I remember
thee?”
“Dickon Greenleaf of Nottingham, an’ it like your worship.”
“I will not forget it,” said the unknown, with a low laugh, which
thrilled the stout archer’s nerves so unpleasantly that he
instinctively made the sign of the cross.
Just then the too familiar war cry of “St. George for England!” broke
out behind the combatants, and told the dismayed French that they were
completely hemmed in. The master-mind that guided every turn of that
night’s wild work had not forgotten the Neuillet Bridge, and the
English force sent to seize it had, after a fight as fierce as that on
the causeway itself, effected its purpose, thus cutting off the retreat
of De Chargny’s men, who, already weary and out of heart, now gave way
altogether.
“Yield, noble Sir Eustace! The toils are around thee and thine,” cried
the unknown, who had just come hand-to-hand with De Ribeaumont for the
third time. “Thou hast done thy devoir this night as never man did yet,
and it is no shame to a good knight to yield when escape is none.”
“Thou say’st sooth,” said the gallant Frenchman, with a faint sigh,
“and I shame me not to yield to one like thee. I render me true
prisoner, rescue or no rescue, and therewith give I thee my sword.”
“Not so,” cried the unknown, gently putting back the offered weapon.
“Sin and shame were it, I trow, to deprive so good a knight of the
sword that none else can wield so well. Keep thy good blade, noble sir,
and may’st thou draw it on many a more fortunate field than this!”
So chivalrous a compliment, from a foe of such prowess, well-nigh
consoled the brave Frenchman for his defeat; but none the less was he
eager to learn who this warrior could be, who had not only matched his
hitherto invincible sword, but had mastered it too. On that point,
however, he was not left long in doubt, for, as his captor led him in
through the gate, the light from within fell right on the latter’s now
unhelmeted face, and Sir Eustace started to see that his nameless
conqueror was no other than King Edward himself!