Authors: Martin Archer
Tags: #Historical Fiction
“Captain Leslie,” I ask as I climb down from the wagon “do you suppose any of your men would like to accept weapons for part of their pay?”
Chapter Eight
Peter finally gallops in on an exhausted horse with news of Cornell almost a week later – yesterday he saw Cornell’s men beginning to arrive on the far bank of the Tamar. He appears to have a force of about two thousand fighting men and a huge train of servants, helpers, and commissaries. We have about nine hundred archers and pike men plus about four hundred fetchers and carriers.
Within the hour of Peter’s arrival he is wolfing down food in front of the fire in the great hall, I am off to join our army in the field, and Restormel’s draw bridge is up. Now we’ll wait and drill and prepare the field until it’s time to fight. Peter will stay for a few hours and then head back to the picquet. According to Peter, the Tamar is still flooding. No one will be able to cross for three or four days.
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Cornell is coming with such a huge army that we have no choice but to agree to terms. That’s the sadly reality of the news which the Archdeacon of Cornwall brings us. He’s accompanied by a man Peter sent from his picquet.
It seems that the Archdeacon is so anxious for peace that the good man crossed the River Tamar with a single servant to once again visit Restormel in order to give us the sad news. But all is not lost – the Archdeacon is offering his services as a mediator. He is also offering to collect and deliver the necessary coins so the Bodmin monks will pray for our souls if no agreement can be reached for our departure.
And, though he never mentions it, he’s probably come to inquire about the missing Bishop of Devon and spy for Cornell and his cousin, the Earl of Devon. It doesn’t escape me that the Archdeacon is based at the Exeter Cathedral in Devon and lost the clerical duties associated with his office when Thomas was appointed Bishop of Cornwall.
“Your prayers and those of the monks are always welcome, Archdeacon. But, as you know, we are sworn to send all our coins directly to the Pope.”
Of course I don’t mention that we are also sworn to only send them when we need to bribe him and his nuncios.
“And did you know that the new Bishop of Devon is visiting us, Archdeacon? I’m sure he’d appreciate it if you’d spend some time with him, perhaps share a nearby room so you can pray for peace together. He’s a bit lonely I fear what with everyone so busy with all the preparations that have to be made for the coming battles. We can’t have that, can we?”
An hour later the Bishop and Archdeacon are in their respective basement cells and doubtlessly jumping around to stay warm and chatting in the dark about “God’s Will” and their futures - and I’m riding back to our battle camp on the hill west of the castle eating on the ox joint Helen brought to me as I was leaving.
It’s quite delicious.
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A rider from Peter’s picquet at the Tamar ford near Launceston came in while I was holding a candle so a couple of my men could see to guide the archdeacon to his new room below the great hall. The picquet rider brought a message from Peter - Cornell’s men are gathering on the other side of the Tamar and seem to be getting ready to attempt a crossing even though the river is still high from the recent rains.
If our little company of mounted and wagon-carried archers leaves immediately we can reach Peter and his picquet at our rendezvous point by dawn.
The ploughmen have been hard at work for days and the ground to the front and sides of our intended battle line is ploughed as deep as the ploughs can go from the front of our battle line to the arrow range of our strongest archers. Only a narrow path in the middle is unplowed and walkable. That’s important for it means the plough horses are available to pull wagons.
The high waters on the Tamar means the possibility of hitting Cornell’s forces at the river ford on the wagon trail is too good an opportunity to pass up; so I give the order. Thirty minutes later we leave to the waves and cheers of the men who aren’t going with us – eighteen archers on horseback and six wagons carrying another forty archers, food for the men and horses, and bales of arrows.
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It takes longer than I expected to reach our picquet. The sun is already coming up when Peter steps out of the bushes along the path and waves a cheery hello.
His calm appearance and behavior is very encouraging to us all, yes it is.
“The river’s still quite high and they haven’t started crossing.”
Our very first move is to turn the wagons about and give the horses a drink in the little stream running nearby and a goodly portion of grain. While that is being done Peter leads me forward to the concealed position where he and his men sit while they watch the ford.
And there they are – a host of men is gathered in a camp on the other side of the river. We can see their tents and wagons and sometimes actually hear them and smell their cooking fires.
All day long we sleep and eat and quietly watch - and once I think I see Cornell himself among a group of knights who walk down towards the ford where they will cross the river. A few feet closer and I would have attempted a very long shot to try to take him.
Peter and I each notch a “light” we select for maximum distance and wait hopefully – but Cornell, if that’s who it is, turns and walks back to a tent in the middle of the camp.
Later that evening in the dark we quietly bring our men to their positions high on the riverbank immediately in front of the ford. We’ve practiced it before but this time we’re moving up to the ford for real.
“Everybody stays down; nobody moves; nobody says a word; and nobody launches until I give the shout.”
Over and over Peter and I say it quietly as we watch in the moonlight as the men slip into their positions behind the logs we cut down and pulled into place weeks ago. We look down on the river where it widens to reduce the water depth and create a ford - when the river is low. Cornell’s men will come across right in front of us when they come. We can reach about a hundred paces beyond the other side of the river with our “longs
.”
I wonder if Cornell’s men or his mercenaries have ever faced long bows or know their range?
It’s always scary for men to wait in ambush and not be able to see either their friends or watch the enemy approach. That’s why we’ve got the archers virtually shoulder to shoulder - so every man can see at least five or six other archers and Peter and I can see them all.
It’s important that no man feels deserted or alone. That’s when men panic and run.
What’s surprising is that Cornell has not sent someone to range over this side of the river looking for an ambush –
or has he? Uh, oh.
“Peter, send Issac back to stay at the wagons and horses and make sure they are ready to go on a moment’s notice. Tell him to stay there and to run to us shouting out as loud as he can if any of Cornell’s men have crossed elsewhere and try to creep up on us.”
Damn, we should have brought a horn. And I probably should have sent the wagons on to Launceston.
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Cornell’s men gather along the far riverbank and begin coming across the next morning. They start having trouble almost immediately because the river is still high and running fast even though it is lower than it was yesterday afternoon. They should have waited.
I wonder why they didn’t.
“Peter,” I whisper, “why do you think they aren’t waiting for the river to go down?”
“I don’t know. But they’re damn fools if they try and that’s a fact. We crossed when it was lower and it was difficult then. Remember how we lost the man who was riding double with George the shoemaker? This is going to be worse and many of Cornell’s men will be on foot. Maybe they just don’t realize how difficult it’s going to be.”
Our position is on a bluff of land overlooking the River Tamar. The Tamar a very important river because it literally cuts Cornwall off from the rest of England - it starts only a couple of miles from the northern coast but flows southerly all the way across England to Plymouth. Cornell and his men must cross the Tamar somewhere if they are to get from Devon to Cornwall.
Cornell’s men are traveling on the only road that runs all the way across Devon, the wagon path that follows the old Roman road to where the River Tamar widens near Launceston Castle and becomes somewhat fordable when the river is low.
Usually there is a small ferry just below the ford. Ferrymen living in the hovels on either side of the river pull it back and forth across the river to carry wagons and keep travelers’ feet dry, at least for those who are willing to pay the ferrymen’s small fee.
As you might imagine, the ferry and the ferrymen are not here today – as soon as we heard about Cornell coming to Cornwall with an army we paid the ferrymen to float the ferry almost all the way down the river to the river’s mouth.
They’d have taken the ferry all the way down if it hadn’t gotten stuck on a sandbar. When the war is finished we’ll have to help the ferrymen build a new one. We need a ferry here.
Cornell’s army came on the wagon road across Devon and got as far as the ford. His camp is out in the open for all to see. It starts almost at the water’s edge on the Devon side of the river; our position is on the Cornwall side overlooking the ford.
At the moment we’re under cover; we’re hiding in ambush where we can’t be seen from the other side of the river. From up here on the embankment that slopes down to the river below us we can cover the entire river ford with our longbows and well into Cornell’s camp on the other side.
It’s probably fair to say that either Cornell and his men don’t know we’re here or they don’t know the range of a longbow; hopefully they are ignorant of both.
At the moment the Tamar is muddy and running fast and high as a result of the recent heavy rains. We’re about thirty feet away from the edge of the water and about twenty feet above it. When the river goes back down to normal we’ll be about a hundred feet from the edge of the water and about thirty feet above it.
All day long we lay hidden side by side in a row on the cold damp weeds and brush behind the logs and watch. It’s damn cold and uncomfortable even though the rain stopped yesterday afternoon. But we can’t get up. If we do we might be seen by the men across the way.
Actually all of us don’t watch the ford and Cornell’s camp on the other side of the River Tamer; only I watch and I do so by peering through the branches of a big bush so that I’m not likely to be seen.
Everyone else took heed of my dire threats and is keeping their heads down and their mouths shut - and we all spend the day silently shivering in our damp clothes until the sun finally breaks through late in the morning.
By the time darkness falls the men and I are wet, cold, thirsty and hungry. Now is the time to move back for the night before the moon comes out, if it comes out at all due to the clouds that were passing overhead most of the day and periodically sprinkled rain on us.
“All right,” I finally whisper to the men on either side of me. “Pass it on. We’re pulling back. Everyone is to very quietly crawl to the rear and reassemble at the wagons. Take your bows and quivers with you and all the extra bales of arrows. No talking and don’t stand up and walk until you are well into the trees.”
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Peter and the four ostlers are expecting us and ready. They hand every man a loaf of bread and a piece of cheese from the stores in the wagons. And every one gets a sip from a wine skin.
That’s our meal. And when we finish we all jam together side by side in two of the wagons and huddle under their cargo rain skins in an unsuccessful effort to stay warm and keep our clothes dry. The ostlers will all stay up and keep the watch; there’ll be no campfires to warm us tonight, that’s for sure.
Our sleep is fitful complete with muttered curses, loud snores, and periodic farts. I’m not sure I really sleep but I must have done because once in the night I jerk awake from a dream - which I promptly cannot remember; except that it must have involved sex since my dingle is hard.
At some point the clouds part long enough for the moon to come out and the light causes me to jerk awake. Daybreak looks to be about an hour or two away. It’s time for Peter to lead us back to our position overlooking the river ford. He knows it well – he’s spent the better part of the last two weeks watching the ford and the wagon track leading up to it.
“All right. Everyone up. Rise and shine, you lot. No talking. Time to piss and shite. Then everyone grab a loaf from the bread wagon and assemble around the wagon pulled by the two grays.”
Five minutes later we follow Peter back to the ford. Daybreak arrives about an hour later. There is no doubt about it – the river is significantly lower. Not back to normal, mind you, but significantly lower. Actually not all the men come with us. I tell two of them to stay with Peter because they have loud and uncontrollable coughs.