Insurrection (38 page)

‘I want Madog found,’ said Edward over the dying man’s insane screaming, as he turned to John de Warenne.

‘As do we all, my lord,’ said Warenne. The earl blinked into the snow swirling around them. ‘But we cannot last out here in this weather without supplies.’

As the king’s men made their way back to Nefyn to gather the rest of the army, the snow began to fall in earnest, covering the bodies of the dead and smothering the fire.

33

The waters of the Menai Strait were clogged with boats, filling the narrow channel where the water churned in the fast-flowing tide. Men strained at the oars as the vessels pitched. The air was crowded with drums. Ahead, a long wedge of land rose from the strait, above which the sky was a watery mess of blues and greys. The blizzards that had covered the north of Wales in a shroud since January were over, but the higher ground was still stubbled with snow, soil peppered dark amid the white. On a ridge that sloped up from Anglesey’s shoreline, beacons burned weakly, warning those in the fields beyond what was coming.

Robert grasped the gunwales as the boat rocked over a wave. April’s chill had tightened the skin on his face, but the rest of him, encased in armour, was protected from the cold. It made him awkward, bulky in the confined space of the deck. Mail chausses covered his hose, tied to a belt, over which he wore a tunic, gambeson, hauberk and surcoat. The gambeson was stained red with rust. He could smell the metal of it. Around him his men were hunched between the oarsmen with the other knights. The squires were ranked precariously at the back, holding the horses. Lying along the deck of one vessel was a tree trunk, bristling with spikes and looped with chains. Foot soldiers were hunkered down around its length, binding cloth around their hands. All were fixed on the island looming ahead. Robert knew fewer faces now. Many men had joined them last month from the south when the passes through the mountain barriers of Cader Idris and Snowdon had cleared, rivers thawing to rush in torrents from the peaks. Others, those he had known since the start of the war, were barely recognisable after the weakness that had blighted them through the winter. Faces once full and hale were gaunt, skin loose, eyes hollow.

After the attack on the baggage train, King Edward had wanted to strike back, but the Welsh, faster on foot in the rocky terrain, had disappeared, the snow obscuring any trace. Wrathful, humiliated, the king was forced to lead his army back to Conwy. With no supplies on the march they weakened quickly. By the second day they were drinking melted snow. By the third the first deaths occurred, men not sleeping close enough to the fires. Horses lost their footing in the deepening drifts and the knights were forced to abandon the few carts that survived the assault. Conwy, appearing late on the fourth day, its walls almost invisible in the surrounding white, had been an answered prayer. It was comfort short-lived, the king’s steward counting the few grain sacks left in the castle’s stores in uneasy silence. The next day the wind stiffened, howling in from the sea where waves rolled into the mouth of the estuary. The sky, sickly green, swarmed with snow, blinding those on the battlements, who searched the horizon for the ships from the Cinque Ports and Ireland that were due to supply them. The winds raged, the sea swelled and the ships didn’t come.

The new year of 1295 came with bitter hunger. The trees in Conwy’s orchards were hacked down for fuel. The last sheep were slaughtered. The wine and beer went quickly and soon everyone, the king included, was forced to drink water mixed with honey. It was only late in February when the blizzards died away to leave a land wreathed in white that the seas calmed and through breaks in the clouds the snowy caps of the mountains became visible. One leaden afternoon, soon after, the first ships were sighted in the estuary. Men cheered on the battlements, their lips cracking as they grinned. After the supplies, came men from the south, including Humphrey’s father, who had annihilated the insurgents he had been arrayed against in Brecon. Nonetheless the king was not appeased, for the nearness of Madog’s force, somewhere in the peaks above Conwy, had taunted him all through the storms.

As the snowstorms receded, a large force was sent out under the command of the earls of Hereford and Warwick. Acting on the confession of the Welshman at Nefyn they headed into the mountains to seek out Madog’s stronghold. Their men disguised in white cloaks to hide them in the snow, the earls led their force unnoticed all the way up to the walls of the ruined fortress in the shadow of Snowdon. There, as morning was breaking, vengeance was served. Hundreds of Welsh insurgents perished in the brutal assault, the English overrunning the rubble-strewn compound where many of the king’s belongings, stolen from the baggage train, were seized. It was only after the bloody battle ended that Hereford’s men saw trails in the snow leading into the woods and realised some insurgents had fled. As they searched through the dead and roughly questioned the survivors, they discovered Madog had been among them. Days later, scouts brought word of the rebel’s location. Madog and his commanders had gone by boat to Anglesey. They had him on the run, the net closing around his scattered forces. Less than a month after it seemed the king and his army might waste away inside the snow-locked walls of Conwy, the tide had turned.

As the drummers increased their rhythm, Robert saw men on the beach ahead turning to run, courage failing them in the face of the incoming fleet. Beyond, behind a ditch and earth ramparts crowned with a wooden palisade, was the town of Llanfaes. The men were running towards the gates of the town, where a stream of people and animals were flooding in across a bridge of banked mud. Some of the soldiers in the boats jeered, but there was little humour in the sound. As men began to pull on helms, Robert sensed their tension. He felt as taut as a bowstring. Like many here he had seen no real action in this campaign, unlike Pembroke, Hereford and Warwick’s forces, already blooded, their mettle tested. Now was the chance the rest had been waiting for to prove their worth to their king.

The first boats ground into the shore’s shingle. Men stowed the oars and jumped into the icy waters, hauling the vessels through the foaming waves. Archers leapt down behind, lining up on the sand while the knights and horses disembarked. Destriers stamped in agitation as gangplanks were thrown down and the beasts were led on to the beach, their hooves sinking in the mud. The knights mounted first, snapping down visors and drawing swords. More boats were grinding ashore in the gaps between. The spiked tree trunk was lifted off by sixteen men, heaving on the chains to lug its length up the beach. The king mounted Bayard and, amid the shouts of his commanders, he and his men began to ride, the archers moving to make way, then falling in behind. The sixteen men with the ram came in their wake, muscles straining. The foot soldiers were last, wielding pikes, hammers and falchions.

Robert rode beneath the banner of Carrick, the dragon shield on his left arm. He wore it proudly now in common cause; this symbol of Arthur, the warrior king. As he caught sight of Humphrey, the knight raised his fist in a defiant gesture that Robert returned. Today, God willing, they would finish this campaign. He wanted to return home blooded, to be able to tell his grandfather that he too had won his spurs in the king’s war. Nerves and anticipation battled within him, his breaths coming hard and fast in the tight encasement of his helm.

The vanguard approached the gates of Llanfaes. At a signal from John de Warenne the knights and squires slowed, keeping their distance from the earthen ramparts, while the men with the ram came in. Archers were ordered into a line, ready to fire volleys over the palisade. A few missiles shot down from beyond the barricade as the sixteen soldiers hefted the ram across the bank of mud that formed a bridge to the gates. One caught a man in the back of the neck. As he dropped, two more soldiers were sent in, ducking down and throwing wary glances at the palisade. One dragged the wounded man out of the way while the other took his place, grasping the chain. Together, the sixteen stumbled forth, charging the ram’s weight towards the gates. The barriers shuddered with the impact, but didn’t break. The men hauled it back and ran in again, wincing with the effort. The knights watched, their horses stamping in agitation. More arrows plunged down. After them came bundles of burning straw that scattered on the men at the ram, causing them to break their stride, several forced to swat away the flaming debris. The English archers were given a signal and they let loose over the gates. A few cries, some of warning, some of pain, sounded beyond.

The ram’s head smashed against the barrier, again and again, the gates now showing signs of buckling with every impact. At last, there was a cracking sound as the head punched its way through. To frantic shouts behind the gates it was dragged free, the spikes ripping at the timbers. As the men carried the ram back across the mud bridge, soldiers raced in with hammers and pikes to smash apart the remains of the gates. The wood splintered to reveal figures scattering beyond. Trumpets bellowed and the first knights spurred their destriers across, hooves kicking up mud and smouldering embers of straw. King Edward himself rode in the van, sword raised, Bayard fearless in the charge. Arrows shot towards them from defensive positions in the streets. Barbed tips stuck in caparisons and shields. One horse reared as it was hit, its hooves slipping to send it toppling into the ditch, crushing its rider beneath its weight.

There was a press at the gates. Robert found himself in the thick of it, men yelling, horses gnashing, then he was through into a storm of noise and motion, his vision channelled by his helm. Something glanced off his head, an arrow perhaps, before he was swept off down the street ahead, mud and timber houses flashing past. The rebels and townsmen who had been defending the gates fled before the incoming tide of cavalry. The knights in front of Robert swung down their blades at the running figures, few of whom wore armour. One man fell, bounced between two horses. He disappeared beneath the iron-shod hooves of those who came behind. Robert felt Hunter plunge down into something soft, before being caught up in the wake of Sir John de Warenne and his men, drawn along by the momentum of their horses. His brother and the Essex knights and squires had been close behind him through the gates, but there was no way of telling if they were still there, the fury of the charge making it impossible to do anything but fix his gaze forward and make sure he didn’t collide with those in front.

As they rode down a muddy thoroughfare into an orchard where the ground was grey with melted snow, Robert glimpsed knights breaking away to fling torches on to the thatch roofs of buildings. The Welsh broke up among the trees, trying desperately to outrun the charge. One man threw himself at a low branch and hauled himself up. A knight spurred his horse towards him, swinging his sword brutally into the man’s back. The blade scythed through flesh and muscle, opening a wide gash in the man’s torso with a burst of blood and organs. The man, almost severed in two, slid from the branch and crumpled in the slush as the knight galloped on. Another man, his back against a tree, lifted his hands and shouted for mercy. A knight stabbed down as he thundered past, the tip of his sword punching fast through the Welshman’s neck then out again, leaving the man to collapse, coughing red down his chest. Others were hacked apart in brief shocks of blood.

More knights were pouring into the streets behind as Robert followed Warenne. He saw them splitting off, leading troops down side streets in pursuit of the townsfolk, among whom were the remains of Madog’s forces. He caught pale faces in the windows of houses, heard screams as smoke sharpened the air. Commanders roared through the iron teeth of their helms and men shrieked like devils as they killed, or were killed. Horror opened up down every street in every thrust of sword, every swing of hammer and pike. Flesh, life, soul: these things of men were reduced to targets, to be destroyed without remorse.

Robert held back in the press, letting others go after the rebels fleeing before the charge. Their orders were to slaughter anyone found in the streets to provoke a quick surrender, after which mercy would be granted to those left alive. He had seen death throughout his life, but the duel he’d had with Guy was the closest he’d come to ending someone’s life and even then there had been rules imposed. There were no such boundaries here. The freedom to kill was a dizzying, precipitous feeling. But the veteran knights were pushing in behind him, forcing the issue. With a snarl of frustration at his own hesitation, Robert fixed on one man darting away down an alley and spurred his horse out of the crush in pursuit.

Sunlight flashed in puddles that burst in sprays as his horse plunged through them. In the gaps between the buildings he glimpsed other men scurrying like rats through the rubbish and mud. Infantry were pouring into the alleys and battering through doorways to hunt down the rebels. Smoke billowed up with screams. The Welshman he’d fixed upon was just ahead, arms and legs pumping frantically. Robert raised his sword, a mad pounding in his head. Suddenly, the man ducked down another street and Robert went crashing on past. With a curse, he brought Hunter to a halt. Turning the animal with a pull on the left rein and a rough kick of his right spur, he pursued.

The man was some distance away now. Robert saw him try to push into one of the houses, but the door was barred. In desperation he sprinted on. Robert rode quickly up behind, closing the gap, tensing for the kill, as he had done a hundred times with wolf and stag and boar. Swinging his broadsword up and round, he brought the blade slamming down into the curve between the man’s shoulder and neck. The impact of the strike was a shock, not just in Robert’s arm and shoulder, but in his gut and chest. It was nothing like striking at an animal. Wrenching his sword free, he cantered on down the alley. The blade in his hand gleamed with blood, shocking red in the winter sunlight.