Then the clatter of hundreds of horses’ hooves was in the street outside our door and I realised that the English army, garrisoned inside the town, was gathering for a counter attack. They must think that if they could dislodge the French from the gates of the city, that the surrounding countryside could be retaken and the pressure relieved from the town defences.

We could hear the horses go by and then the silence while they assembled at the gate. I realised that for them to get out, the gate would have to be thrown open, and for that time my little shop would be right in the centre of the battle.

It was enough. I whispered to Marie in French, ‘We have to get out of here. I am going to Daniel, d’you want to come with me?’

‘I’ll go to my cousins, they live near the harbour.’

I crept to the door and opened it a crack. The sight as I peered through was terrifying. The street outside was absolute chaos, with soldiers running up the stone steps to the ramparts laden with weapons, wounded men being helped down. Another great vat of tar was being heated over an open fire only yards from the thatch of a neighbouring house. And from the other side of the gate came the dreadful clamour of an army beating against the door, scaling the walls, firing upwards, pulling cannon into place and firing shot, determined to breach the walls and get into the town.

I threw open the door and almost at once heard a most dreadful cry from the walls immediately above the shop as a hail of arrows found an unprotected band of men. Marie and I fled into the street. Behind us, and then all around us, came a dreadful crash. The French siege engine had catapulted a great load of stone and rubble over the wall. It rained down on our street like a falling mountain. Tiled roofs shed their load like a pack of cards spilling to the floor, stones plunged through thatch, knocked chimney pots askew, and they rolled down the steeply canted roofs and plunged to the cobblestones to smash around us with a sound like gunfire. It was as if the very skies were raining rocks and fires, as if we would be engulfed in terror.

‘I’m off!’ Marie shouted to me, plunging away down a lane which led towards the fish quay.

I could not even shout a blessing, the smell of the smoke from burning buildings caught in the back of my throat like the stab of a knife and choked me into silence. The smell of smoke—the very scent of my nightmares—filled the air, filled my nostrils, my lungs, even my eyes, so that I could not breathe and my eyes were filled with tears so that I could not see.

From the ramparts above me I heard a high shriek of terror and I looked up to see a man on fire, the burning arrow still caught in his clothing, as he dived to the floor and rolled, trying to extinguish the flames, screaming like a heretic as his body burned.