I Serve by Rosanne E. Lortz

walls of the town loomed before us with the same impregnability they had possessed in September. It had been six months, and we were no closer to attaining the prize.
    The ladies had grown fretful and talked of leaving again for England. But there would be no leaving without the queen, and she was determined to lay her head down on the same pillow as her lord and husband. Philippa’s short, plump figure had grown plumper still in the past months. The prince confirmed my unvoiced suspicions when he noted that his mother was with child. She would allow none of her ladies leave her at such a time, though God knows that the experience was common enough to her. It was the twelfth child she had carried, and there have been more since Calais.
    Calais’s recalcitrance was wearing on more than just the ladies. The king’s mood was ugly, and all the nobles were on edge. When Calais’s governor had expelled the feminine and feeble from the town in early December, His Majesty had assumed that the end was near. He had only to maintain the siege and Calais would capitulate. The siege had been maintained, and yet the town still held out. It was incontrovertible, it was incomprehensible, but it was fact. The only explanation was that the town was still receiving supplies from somewhere.
    The blockade had not been breached by land, but the wall of wooden ships proved to be a porous palisade. Suspicious that the town might be receiving supplies from the sea, the king increased the numbers of galleys and cogs that lay across the harbor. Now barely a minnow could pass through the water without a cry of alarm and a hoisting of the sail.
    The king’s suspicions were well founded. The French for some time now had been smuggling in food at night in flat-bottomed barges. The increased vigilance on our part made their midnight runs impossible now. After the barge captains made several abortive attempts that nearly cost them their lives, they forsook the enterprise. No amount of gold was tempting enough to lure them back through the teeth of our English sharks. And so Calais was shut up as she should be, with a cordon drawn around her as tight as a tourniquet; the flow of life was cut off at last.
    Shortly after the cessation of the food-smuggling, the gates of Calais opened once more. This time a crowd nothing short of two thousand persons crawled out of the ramparts. It was the same sort of feeble folk as before—women, children, and old ones, all too weak to wield a sword or wind a crossbow. The siege had begun to pinch unbearably, and Calais had expelled two thousand more bodies with useless hands and hungry mouths.
    But the careless clemency with which the king had greeted the last group was spent. Calais had cost him too much money and too many months. Whatever debt the city owed him, these poor folk would now pay.
    “ Shall we open the palisade?” asked Sir Walter Manny, hoping to let the town folk pass through unmolested.
    “ In God’s name, no!” said the king. “They’ll gain no grain from this maneuver. Drive them back from the lines. They must re-enter the town and share the food and fortune of their friends.”
    The palisade bristled with archers, and they fired a few warning shots at the émigrés. That halted them. I saw them debating amongst themselves, though none in this ragged band seemed to hold any leadership. We fired again, and the volley sent them scurrying away. In a moment’s time they were back at the base of the wall, looking up for succor like a hurt child clinging to his mother’s knees. But the gate which had opened to release them was no longer open to receive them. The cries or entreaties of the turned-out two thousand had no power to turn the winch that raised the portcullis. A man’s head appeared on the height of the gatehouse tower. He had come to address the refugees. The words he spoke were lost in the distance which separated us from the town, but the people below heard him well enough. A dreadful