1356

tower was just a hundred paces away, but the French disarray persuaded them to use it now. They pulled away the great timber screen that had sheltered the weapon and released its metal arrow.
    The quarrel hammered into the face of the tower, rocking it back, and such was the force in the steel-reinforced bow yard, which was fully ten feet across, that the great iron head pierced leather and wood to stick halfway through the tower’s front. It sprayed sparks and buckled one of the hides, revealing the planks beneath, and three fire arrows thumped home into the bare wood as the springald was laboriously rewound.
    ‘Pull the damn thing back!’ the Lord of Douglas snarled. Maybe the tower could be backed out of the hole instead of being pushed through it, then the dip could be filled and the great contraption started forward again.
    ‘Ropes!’ Geoffrey de Charny shouted. ‘Fetch ropes!’
    The watching men-at-arms were silent now. The tower was slightly canted and wreathed in gentle smoke, but it was not obvious what was wrong except to the men close by the stalled tower. The king, still mounted on his white horse, rode a few yards forward, then checked. ‘God is on our side?’ he enquired of a chaplain.
    ‘He can be on no other, sire.’
    ‘Then why …’ the king began the question and decided it was better not answered. Smoke was thickening on the right-hand side of the tower now, which shuddered as a second springald bolt crashed home. A man-at-arms limped away from the levers with a bolt through his thigh as squires ran with armfuls of rope, but it was too late.
    Fire suddenly showed in the centre floor. For a moment there was just a great billow of smoke, then flames shot through the grey. The planks on the right side were alight and there was not enough water to douse the blaze. ‘God can be very fickle,’ the king said bitterly, and turned away. A man was waving a flag to and fro on the ramparts, revelling in the French defeat. The drums and the trumpets fell silent. Men were screaming in the tower; others were jumping to escape the inferno.
    Roland was unaware of the fire until the smoke began churning up through the ladder’s hole. ‘Down!’ he shouted. ‘Down!’ The first men scrambled down the ladder, but one of their scabbards became entangled in the rungs, and then flame burst through the hole as the trapped man screamed. He was being roasted in his mail. Another man jumped past him and broke a leg when he fell. The burning man was sobbing now, and Roland ran to help him, beating out the flames with his bare hands. Robbie did nothing. He was cursed, he thought. Whatever he touched turned to ash. He had failed Thomas once, he failed his uncle now, he had married, but his wife had died in her first childbirth, and the child with her. Cursed, Robbie thought, and he still did not move as the smoke thickened and the flames licked at the platform beneath him, and then the whole tower lurched as a third springald bolt crashed home. There were three men left on the top platform with him and they urged him to try to escape, but he could not move. Roland was carrying a wounded man down the ladders, and God must have loved the virgin knight because a fierce swirl of wind blew the flames and smoke away from him as he descended the rungs. ‘Go!’ a man shouted at Robbie, but he was too dispirited to move.
    ‘You go,’ he told the men with him, ‘just go.’ He drew his sword, thinking at least he could die with a blade in his hand, and he watched as the three men tried to climb down the scaffold of timbers at the tower’s open back, but all were scorched by the fierceness of the flames and they jumped to save their lives. One was unharmed, his fall cushioned by men beneath, but the other two broke bones. One of the four flags topping the tower was burning now, the fleurs-de-lys turning into glowing cinders, and the whole tower collapsed. It fell slowly at first, creaking, throwing sparks, then the fall became faster as the great contraption keeled over like a proud ship foundering. Men scattered from its base, and still Robbie did not move. Roland had reached the ground, and Robbie was now alone and rode the burning tower down, clinging to the great stanchion, and the tower fell with a thump and an explosion of sparks and Robbie was thrown clear, rolling amidst small flames and thick smoke, and two Frenchmen saw him and ran into the smoke to pull him out. He had been knocked unconscious by the