Even as she ran toward me with him held out before her, even as she thrust him into my hands, and he came all warm and soft and heavy, I heard myself say: “I can’t take him.”
I saw the lance run her through, spearing her spine, as she cried out again: “Take him! Take him!” and at that moment there was a dreadful crash like a forest falling down all at once and a rush of horses and men and danger, and I stumbled back into the dark interior of the house with the boy held tight against me, and the door swung shut on the street with a bang like a thunderclap.
I turned to thank whoever had saved me but before I could speak there was a roar of flames and a sudden blast of hot smoke, and someone pushed past me and threw open the door again.
The thatched roof of this temporary refuge was alight, burning like a pyre, blazing up like kindling in seconds. Everyone who had been hidden in the house was pushing past me to the street outside, more willing to face the merciless cavalry charge than death by burning; and I, smelling smoke like a frightened rat, dashed out after them, the child gripping to me, tight against my shoulder.
Mercifully, the streets were clear for the moment. The French horsemen had chased after Lord Robert’s troop in one mad dangerous dash. But Daniel’s woman was where they had left her with two great lance thrusts through her body. She lay in a deep puddle of her own blood, dead.
At the sight I snatched her child closer to me and started to run down the street, away from the gate, down the stone steps to the harbor, my feet thudding out a rhythm of fear. I could not wait to look for Daniel, I could not do anything but take the chance I had been given with Lord Robert’s ring. I fled to the harbor like a criminal with the hue and cry at my heels, and I was conscious all around me that everyone else was racing too, some carrying bundles of goods, others clutching their children, desperate to get out of the town before the French turned their horses and came back through again.
The boats were tied by just one rope, all sails furled ready to go at a moment’s notice. I looked desperately around for Lord Robert’s standard and saw it, at the prime position, at the very end of the pier where it would be easiest to slip away. I ran down the pier, my feet thudding on the wooden boards, and skidded to a halt when a sailor leaped from the ship and stood before the gangplank with a shining cutlass out of its scabbard, pointing at my throat. “No further, lad,” he said.
“Lord Robert sent me,” I panted.
He shook his head. “We could all say that. What’s happening in town?”
“Lord Robert led his company out in a charge but the French are in the town already, at his back.”
“Can he turn?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see it.”
He shouted an order over his shoulder. The men on deck stood by the ropes for the sails and two men vaulted ashore and held the rope ready to cast off.
I held out my hand to show his ring gripped tight on my finger, above my wedding ring.
The sailor looked at it once, and then looked again more carefully. “His ring,” he said.
“His own. He gave it me himself. He saw me before he led them out. I am his vassal. I was Hannah the Fool before I came here.”
He stepped back and raked me with a quick glare. “I’d not have recognized you,” he said. “And this? Your son?”
“Yes.” The lie was said and gone before I had time to think, and then I would not have recalled it. “Let me aboard. It is my lord’s order that I go to England.”
He stepped to one side and nodded me up the narrow gangplank and then positioned himself square at the foot again. “But you’re the last,” he said decidedly. “Even if they come with a lock of his hair or a love knot.”
We waited for a long hour while others poured down from the town to the quayside. The sailor had to call for other men to come to push the refugees away from Lord Robert’s pier, and curse them for cowards, while the winter afternoon grew dark and no one could tell us whether Lord Robert had broken the French ranks or whether they had entered the town behind his back and cut him down. Then we saw the town lit up from one point to another as the French besieging army broke through the walls and fired one thatched roof and then another.
The sailor on guard at the gangplank snapped out orders and the crew made ready. I sat very quietly on deck, rocking the child against my shoulder, terrified that it would cry and that they would decide that an extra passenger was not worth the extra risk, especially if my lord was not coming.
Then there was a rush of men and horses down to the quayside and a check and a flurry as they flung themselves from the saddle, threw off their armor and hared up to the waiting ships.
“Steady, boys, steady,” came the stentorian shout from the sailor on guard at the gangplank. Six guards stood behind him, shoulder to shoulder with naked blades at the ready, and they checked every man who tried to come aboard for a password, and turned away a good few who raced back down the pier looking for another boat that would take them in. All the time from the town came the explosion of burning gunpowder and the crack of breaking roof tiles and the roar of buildings fired.
“This is not a defeat, it is a rout,” I said in bewilderment in the baby’s tiny ear and he turned and yawned with his little rosebud mouth in a perfect “ooo” as if he were in utter safety and need fear nothing.
Then I saw my lord. I would have recognized him in any crowd. He was walking, broadsword in one hand, helmet in the other, trailing his feet like a defeated man. Behind him came a train of men limping, bleeding, heads bowed. He led them to the ship and stood aside as they went up the gangplank and threw themselves down with a clatter of dented armor on the deck.
“That’s enough, sir,” the sailor said to him quietly when we were fully loaded and my lord looked up, like a man newly wakened from sleep, and said: “But we have to take the rest. I promised they would serve me and I would take them to victory. I can’t leave them here now.”
“We’ll come back for them,” the sailor said gently. He put one strong arm around my lord’s shoulders and drew him firmly up the gangplank. Lord Robert went slowly, like a sleepwalker, his eyes open but seeing nothing.
“Or they’ll get another passage. Cast off!” the sailor shouted to the man at the stern rope. The man flung the rope on shore and the others unfurled the sails. Slowly we moved from the quayside.
“I can’t leave them!” Robert, suddenly fully alert, turned to the widening gulf of water between ship and land. “I can’t leave them here.”
The men left ashore let out a pitiful cry. “A Dudley! A Dudley!”
The sailor caught up Lord Robert in a great bear hug, holding him away from the rail of the ship, preventing him jumping ashore.
“We’ll come back for them,” he assured him. “They’ll get safe passage in other ships, and if the worst comes to the worst then the French will ransom them.”
“I can’t leave them!” Robert Dudley fought to be free. “Hey! You! Sailors! Turn for port. Get to the quayside again!”
The wind was catching the sails, they flapped and then as they trimmed the ropes, the sails went taut and started to pull. Behind us in Calais there was a resounding crash as the doors of the citadel yielded and the French army spilled into the very center of English power in France. Robert turned, anguished, toward the land. “We should regroup!” he cried. “We are about to lose Calais if we go now. Think of it! Calais! We have to go back and regroup and fight.”
Still the sailor did not release him, but now his hold was less to restrain the young lord and more to hold him in his grief. “We’ll come back,” he said and rocked him from one foot to another. “We’ll come back for the rest of them and then we’ll retake Calais. Never doubt it, sir. Never doubt it.”