Crown in Candlelight (28 page)

‘Hear me, all of ye! I am come into France to recover my lawful inheritance. In this quarrel ye may surely and freely fight. Remember! that ye were born in England’s great realm where your fathers and wives and children now dwell, and there ye must strive to return with great glory and fame. As the Kings of England before me have gained many noble victories over the French, so must each man do his utmost to preserve his honour and that of the crown of England!

‘Archers! Noble archers! Hear me!’ The bright brown eyes snapped and came alight with wilful red. ‘Have ye heard what this vainglorious host plan for your shame?’

As he told them they looked down involuntarily at their right hands, at the fingers already tried and sentenced to mutilation. Murmuring arose. It grew, a running storm of outrage, and, as the taunt was passed on, burgeoned into a sound like the snarl of a winter wolf.

He waited, then continued even louder.

‘This haughty company speak also of selling back my great lords and earls to England. And I choose death! rather than charge England with the payment of my ransom! But first, I choose victory. I will hold those who boast and threaten themselves to ransom! I charge ye all to do the same!’

The wolves were wild now, the clamour growing; men in the rearguard who could not hear had the King’s words passed back and a new reverberation of wrathful excitement was flung back and forth on the fringes of the army. Owen, trembling but now completely unafraid, sat his horse near to Davydd Gam. A hobelar lurched his mount in between them, saying with a mouth made toothless by the bad diet yet full of rapture: ‘Ransom, eh? I’ll get me a fine French lord, and see myself right for life!’

New heart came into the men, a bursting ambition. They forgot their pathetic gear, their cold bare feet and heads. The naked Irishmen cursed in their own weird tongue, while the whole army strained to see the arrogant mystery which menaced them and whose downfall they now ardently desired.

‘Give no quarter!’ the King was yelling. ‘Slay as if they were the Infidel! Our cause is that of God!’

Across the boggy field, the French continued to stand, with banner upon banner nudging one another so closely that at times they became locked together in warring colours. It was a legion of steel. The myriad counts and dukes were living carapaces, encased from head to foot in bolted metal. Their great helmets bore chain aventails riveted at the base, imprisoning the wearer’s neck. Steel plate cast about legs met steel boots at the ankle. Hands in gloves of boiled leather were further weighted by mailed gauntlets. Shining elbow-joints met thick rings of chain mail and merged into steel rivets at the shoulder. Within this metal might, the sweat streamed down. Yet the knights looked jealously at one another, nudging their horses forward, so that each individual’s pride could be viewed to the full, and old grudges cooled by being first in line. The front rank undulated like a steelbound serpent. The first battalion broke and fragmented, reforming untidily as tempers surged. The archers, trying to maintain their battle order, found themselves forced into chaos by the thrusting nobles, and the flanking gunners were driven outwards nearer to the trees. With each jostle, the horses plunged fetlock-deep into the mud.

His exhortation finished, Henry waited while half an hour dragged by. Behind him his army lay quiet again though still vibrant; before him the distant play of coloured movement continued, indecisive.

He called for Sir Thomas Erpingham.

‘Why do they wait?’

Erpingham said: ‘Maybe they remember Quintus Fabius Maximus …’

‘To, harass us to defeat without a battle?’

‘Ay. That the mere sight of their glory will drive us to run!’

‘By the God of Heaven, we will run!’ said Henry. ‘Now! Towards them! Will you ready the bowmen, my lord?’

Twenty years seemed to drop from Erpingham. He turned and rode to the archers. At his sergeants’ commands the wedges tightened still further. Each elbow formed an angle as the first arrow was notched. Sir Thomas smiled encouragingly as he went among the men. Then he threw his marshal’s baton high and cried: ‘
Nestroque!
’ the word of approval and intent. The King and his lords dismounted; the horses were led back through the ranks. In the forefront the royal standard was raised. The light wind caught and flexed it firm. The entire army dipped and knelt, each man signing the sodden ground with the cross and taking a handful of mud to his lips: ‘As I, O God, came of dust, let this be thy sacrament, and should I fall, let me return to Him who made me …’

‘Banners advance! In the name of Jesus, Mary, St George!’

The trumpets sounded in blood-freezing indisputable assent. The call shivered the flesh of even the men in the sick-tents, who raised their heads to curse or pray. Then, moving at a light march over the field, the advance in its three tight divisions went forward, seeming to diminish in size the nearer it came to the monstrous wall of steel ahead.

The small bird abandoned its furrow and took to the air. For a while it flew above the advance, singing, irrelevant, benign.

As the gap between the two armies narrowed to within bowshot range it could be seen that the front line of the enemy had dismounted and stood, solidly mailed, weapons in hand, shining feet dulled at last in the liquid mud. The faces beneath the great helmets became defined. Ruddy and white, clean-shaven or lushly moustached, aloof or expressionless. Behind the leaders the deep rows of footsoldiers clustered untidily, each groping for a place. Horsemen were riding round from the rear to reinforce the wings where the cream of the horseflesh waited; tall fine-blooded destriers like those who had flattened Henry’s archers at Corbie. Hampered by the pushing of the nobles, the bowmen in between were still trying to maintain battle order. They carried iron crossbows with intricate gaffles and winders; there was not a longbow to be seen. The English advanced to within three hundred yards, and Charles d’Albret issued the battle-cry.

‘
Montjoie! St Denis!
’

The scarlet oriflamme beat the air. The steel wall moved forward, the silver serpent ready to become a lunging fish.

Across the gap Erpingham cried a command and a trumpet sounded staccato like a hunting horn. In dense, light-running waves, the archers swept forward with their sharpened stakes, planting them deep at an angle in the ground, like wicked extra warriors pointing towards the enemy. The
chevaux de frise
were formed, standing firm from the incurving flanks to the centre where the bowmen, now back in their places, were deployed between the King and his lords, with space to draw the fletch back to the cheek and feel the sixty pounds’ weight of the hauled string.

Owen stood sideways, aligned with his fellows, his right arm crooked in the hold, the fingers of his left hand firmly about the wood. He bent his left knee and dug the other heel deep in the slime. The bow felt sweet, smooth as the harp. Through half-closed eyes he measured the silver monster. It blurred and heaved with teeth, claws. He whispered: ‘The
Twrch Trwyth
!’ The Giant Boar: he knew his enemy at last.

Further up the line John Page steadied the notch on the hemp and gasped. under the prolonged hold. Lines of unwritten verse, never to be remembered, scurried through him. His weeping was done for the moment and his eyes were as hard as any.

Humphrey of Gloucester gripped his lance, gazed at the sumptuous banners and guessed at the jewels. He longed to rush forward, seize the oriflamme standard from Guillaume Martel and beat about him until the noblemen fell apart like dolls, rained jewels and gold and ransoms … Harry! I should be leading this affray!

Davydd ap Llewellyn ap Hywel murmured from a bloody mind: Grand they are. Have at them. Eh, Lord of Sycharth, my old one? Under this brave mad prince I do battle, but in my heart it’s for the honour of Wales. D’you hear, Glyn Dwr?

Lord Camoys settled his bascinet more firmly on his head and cleared his eyes with a gloved hand. He saw his home, the park beyond the moat in Oxfordshire, where the fallow deer grazed. That pasture had never been tilled, it was thick with thyme and mint and marjoram, feeding the sweetest venison in England. He thought, with love: may my son cherish that meadow. May it bloom aromatic for a thousand years. Let me see my heritage, Stonor, again: let my son be braver than I feel today …

Suffolk found difficulty in breathing. For courage he had drunk a lot of wine last night. Bad wine had killed his father at Harfleur. His blood pounded, his face grew hot with dread.

Edward of York tried to count the weapons opposite him. Some of the French knights had broken their lances off short for more fighting space, yet still mailed shoulder brushed mailed shoulder. He noticed a spot of rust on his own sword. Armourers grow slovenly, he thought.

Erpingham watched his archers with pride. They would stay poised until they broke under the tension. Old battles filled him. Crécy, Poitiers, what had the French learned from them? What else beside the Fabian tactics from that great commander Bertrand Duguesclin? Have they control over their men as I have over mine? And he knew the answer, and smiled.

In the sky over the woods, the King saw St George. He saw him plainly. His head was bare, his sword raised. The bloody cross on his white surcoat was mirrored by cloud and repeated below on the breasts of the men-at-arms. It was enough. He raised his arm to Erpingham. The trumpets screamed again. The sky became black with surging English arrows.

It was as if night had blown up on a tumult of rushing wind, or a million migrating birds flying at top speed, filling air and shadowing earth, their noise almost drowning the yells in the weird darkness—
Montjoie! For Harry! For Jesus! A Denis!
From the French wings came a stutter of cannonfire and a score of stone balls split the English flanks and a few men fell, but the razor-tipped arrows were finding their mark. They were aimed at faces or where the mail was weakest, at the joint of neck and shoulder, elbow or knee. Some of the French took the barbs on their helmets, but many were directly hit, in eye or brow or gullet. Sire Ferry de Lorraine, who had pushed forward to fight near Charles of Orléans, took an arrow in the forehead. Its impact penetrated the steel behind his skull by inches and he fell backwards, a big man made giant by the weight of his mail. He crashed down upon two knights behind him and bore them down with him into the mud. Entombed by the steel shells they wore, they could not rise, but lay crushed, lashing their weighted limbs feebly. In the sight of this and similar calamities the French began their advance in earnest. A further rain of arrows hurtled from the English longbows. The French crossbowmen, cramped in line and hindered by the mechanics of their weapons, tried to reply; they fumbled with crankins and winders, cursing their adversaries’ speed and skill.

The French cavalry moved forward at a lumbering gallop, a great ruthless force erupting from the wings and gathering speed. The horses’ hides, the blinding colours and gold embellishments sparkled, themselves a battle cry. Grimly the archers continued firing, with the precise threefold drill of Notch! Stretch! Loose! their muscles waxing and waning beneath their scarecrow garments. And the sky was black again with sharp-tipped rain, while the mounted host thundered down, intent on crushing once and for all these despised ones. They were unworthy to do battle with the chivalry of France, yet their gadfly shafts had a sting.

They had nearly reached their goal when the leaders saw the
chevaux de frise
, which at a distance had blended with the surrounding clay. The knight commander, trying desperately to haul in his spurred excited horse, turned in the saddle to scream a warning. At that instant an arrow thudded into his temple and he fell forward while his horse died under him, spitted through the heart by twelve inches of wood. The others thundered up close behind, the riders tearing vainly on the bridles as impetus carried the charge on to the stakes and the horses began to scream, terrible, womanly cries. They plunged with breasts and bellies impaled, spouting jets of arterial blood over the English archers, bolting in agony with the stakes still in them, running in all directions, disembowelled. Nearly all the riders were thrown heavily. One knight crashed at Owen’s feet. Cast like a giant insect, immobilized by countless pounds of armour, he stared into Owen’s glazed and naked face. All around writhed a chaos of shrieking beasts and groaning men. One great stallion, dragging its rider by the stirrup, ran through the wedge of archers and fell in a welter of blood near the King and his Household. Clawing at the mud and his own harness, the chevalier at Owen’s feet tried desperately to rise. Someone thrust an axe into Owen’s hand and yelled unintelligibly. He struck down hard across the French knight’s gasping throat. The great steel shape heaved and stilled.

All around, the archers had cast down their bows and were snatching up other weapons, some dropped by the French, swords, daggers, maces, and with these they laid about them, smashing faces, stabbing between rivets at neck and armpit, raising clubs dripping with blood and brains to beat down on the glorious force that had been rendered defenceless by its own armour. Some were dead already, crushed by their mounts or by the weight of those who had fallen on top of them. Others writhed haplessly on the ground, to be killed or dragged away by groups of bowmen to the sergeant in charge of ransoms. For there was gold here as well as blood, although the cream of the nobility still waited beyond the mêlée. Erpingham strode up and down the line restoring order, his surcoat bloodstained, his mouth tight. He quelled any premature rejoicing, and again the trumpets sounded.

Now approaching, the rolling columns of footsoldiers marshalled under the banner of d’Albret seemed wider and greater than ever. Although their forward march was fragmented by wounded men, refugees from the first charge who staggered back among them, and maddened horses crashing in and out of their lines, they came on at a steady rush. Back in their formation, the English bowmen loosed a fresh salvo of great accuracy which checked the enemy approach, although even as these began to fall a fresh force could be seen in the distance and behind this a further row of horsemen standing to arms where the woods began. Yet the trees grew where the French advance progressed, driving the ranks closer together, blocking them in, whereas Henry’s army occupied a wide field. The detachments of archers were free to run, deploying themselves to an outward advantage, moving swiftly, halting to fire at the sides of the approaching columns, catching the weaknesses in the armour, and again, the French who fell brought down their companions by sheer proximity so that they lay piled in helpless drifts of steel.