Blood on the Sand Read Online Free PDF Page B

been kept in a noisome dungeon that was perpetually damp. Sitting down made a man’s hosen sodden from the ordure. This,
in contrast, was a goodly-sized chamber with dry walls and straw on the floor. Two leather buckets were provided for the men, and while they were not enough to cope with the needs of all thirty
men, at least they did not have to make a mess on the floor at first. All had been entangled with chains. Manacles and ankle-shackles hindered their movements.
    ‘What do we do now, Frip?’ Jack asked.
    He had walked over to Berenger, and now squatted in front of his vintener. The other men drew near, shuffling closer, as best they could. Tyler, John of Essex, Clip and the rest formed an
anxious semicircle about him. Berenger eyed them all. They deserved better than this.
    ‘There’s nothing we can do at present,’ he said. ‘We just have to keep quiet and hope that the French won’t mistreat us.’
    Clip nodded mutely, and chewed at a nail. The unaccustomed silence of the wizened, beggarly-featured man was eloquent proof of his inner turmoil. It was rare indeed that he would not declare the
vintaine lost and doomed. His assertion that all would shortly die was an irritating fixture in the men’s lives, and this curious silence from him was as shocking as a sudden death-rattle in
a man’s throat.
    ‘Lads, we’ll get out of here,’ Berenger said with a certainty he didn’t feel. ‘The French won’t want to upset our King more than they have to.’
    ‘Yes, Frip,’ Jack said flatly, and the men drifted away, none of them exchanging so much as a glance, as they selected areas to sit and think over their position.
    Berenger stared at his hands. He had them clasped in his lap, and now he willed them apart, but for some reason he could not move them. They were linked as though bound with invisible thongs. He
felt a heaviness in his soul. Looking about him in the darkened interior of this chamber, he could see his men and the shipmen from the cog, all still and quiet, apart from one or two who stared
about them distractedly as though looking for a means of escape.
    They all knew the reality. The English had been here in France for weeks, trying to bring the French to battle by means of
dampnum
– war by horror. They had waged war on the
peasants and the poor, burning, raping, looting and murdering over a broad front in order to prove the French King’s inability to honour his duty of protection towards his people. The aim was
to entice the French into King Edward III’s Peace and make them reject their own feeble King. Tens of thousands had been robbed, ransomed or slain since the English had landed at
St-Vaast-La-Hougue, and any Frenchman would want to take his revenge. If the roles were reversed, if this were Portsmouth or Southampton, and Frenchmen were captured after raiding in England,
Berenger knew exactly how the enemy would be punished. They would be tortured to within an inch of their souls’ release, allowed to recover, and then tortured again before finally being
executed slowly and painfully in front of a jeering crowd. And he expected exactly that kind of treatment.
    His hands were shaking with his rising panic. In his breast he could feel the muscles tightening. Fear was engulfing him. He knew how the French executed people. In his mind’s eye he could
see the crowd before him as he was led to the wheel and bound to it, while the executioner spat and laughed at him, his collection of sticks and iron bars ready. He would break all Berenger’s
bones one by one. Fires would be lighted nearby to heat the metal brands to scorch and burn him; pincers would be arrayed to flay him alive . . . the horror of a vengeful death with all its
concomitant cruelty.
    ‘Frip – you all right?’ John of Essex said quietly at his side. ‘We can get out of this, you know.’
    ‘I . . . I am well,’ he managed.
    ‘Be calm – for them, Frip. Be strong,’ John whispered.
    Berenger stared