That town he won and made a fray,
That France shall rue till Doomsday,
Deo Gratias!
Then went forth our king most comely,
In Agincourt field he fought manfully,
Through grace of God most marvellously,
He had the field and victory,
Deo Gratias!
I have heard the song since, many times, shouted around the campfires of any army or mercenary company with a fair number of Englishmen in their ranks. The first time I heard it, I was eaten up with envy, and stopped just short of throwing a stone at the lad’s head as he reined in beside the gate.
“You are the bastard of Kingshook?” he cried. “The one they call the Wolf-Cub?”
I was both flattered and annoyed by his insolence, and gave a curt nod.
“Then rejoice, Wolf-Cub!” he cried, “for the armies of the French have been utterly smashed, and hundreds of their great men slain or captured! London is swamped with ransom money. An ocean of French gold, enough for us all to drown in!”
“Calm yourself,” I said as he laughed and clapped his hands, “the King is returned safe to London, then?”
“Safe? My lord, His Majesty is not only safe, but exalted! He returned five days ago, and entered London on foot, dressed soberly, like the pious man he is. His knights followed, guarding all the Frenchies they captured at Agincourt -”
“Agincourt? Where is that?”
“It is what they call the battlefield, my lord, the field where our little army, ragged and half-starved, tore down the might of France! They say thousands of citizens turned out at Blackheath to meet the King, the mayor and the aldermen all in scarlet, the lesser men in red cloaks with parti-coloured hoods, and they set up a tower at Cornhill draped with a scarlet cloth, and around it were the arms of Saint George, Saint Edmund and of England...”
He gabbled on, describing in detail the magnificent reception the Londoners gave King Henry when he entered the city. The celebrations were all the greater, I suspect, because few had expected him to achieve much in France, let alone win such a resounding victory against the odds. There had been nothing like it since Poitiers, some sixty years or more in the past. Since then the English cause in France had met with little save defeat and humiliation, until Henry so gloriously redeemed our fortunes.
Great Sultan, I know not if the fame of Agincourt has reached your Eastern courts, though it still rings like a trumpet-blast through Christendom, some forty years on. Your Majesty may have heard that a little army of English and Welsh bowmen, confronted by a French host ten times their number, performed a miracle of arms on Saint Crispin’s Day and defeated the enemy with great slaughter.
A miracle it was, but the chief weapon of the English was not the war-bow, six feet of English yew, capable of loosing an arrow a distance of two hundred yards. The bodkin-tipped arrows our men shot that day failed to penetrate the thick steel plate worn by the French knights and men-at-arms.
No, the saviour of England that day was something far more prosaic than holy saints or grey-fletched arrows: in short, King Henry owed his victory to mud. Acres of thick, cloying mud, knee-deep and soaking wet after days of heavy rain. Mindful of previous defeats, the French dismounted and tramped across the field to engage our army on a narrow front. Weighed down by their steel shells, they sank into the mud, and became hopelessly crowded together.
Picture, O Sultan, thousands of brave, misguided men drowning in filth. Meanwhile the rain hammers down and our half-naked archers, some with their breeks cut away to allow loose excrement to flow from their dysentery-ravaged bowels, tear into the baffled French with hammers and hatchets, clubs and knives and short swords.
That was Agincourt, perhaps England’s greatest military triumph, as described to me by veterans and eyewitnesses of the battle. Poets and bards and troubadours transformed a vicious brawl in unspeakable conditions into a hymn to martial glory. I, who have seen and fought in more pitched battles than most, have learned to despise the flowery lies told of war.
At the time of Agincourt, I was still young, and as overcome with the glory and romance of it all as any other Englishman who had never been within shouting distance of a battlefield.
I sent the red-headed boy off with a silver penny for his trouble, and spent the rest of the day listening to a dispute between two of my late mother’s tenants. It was over a cow, I think. The silly beast had slipped her tether and wandered onto some neighbouring land, which caused the peasants to break each other’s heads over their rights to her.
Such was the quiet, dull life of a minor country esquire. It might have been my lot forever, but for my cousin William.
Years passed. Once he had used the glory of Agincourt to milk his Parliament of funds, King Henry made ready to embark on another expedition to France. This time he planned to land in Normandy, his ancestral duchy, and conquer it in methodical fashion, one town and castle at a time. I was still chained to the land at Kingshook, and took no thought to joining the army before it sailed.
One warm midsummer day, I sat on the bank beside the little stream that ran through the orchard behind my house. This was a favourite spot of mine, a haven of peace and quiet, where I liked to study my reflection in the water.
I tried to read the eyes that stared back at me. Those eyes, and my slender, wiry build, were my mother’s gift. The soft, almost girlish contours of my face were all (according to her) derived from Thomas Page. I found it hard to imagine that a hard-bitten mercenary could have looked so fair, more doe than wolf.
My thoughts fastened on him. He was a mercenary, a freebooter and a base rogue who used and dishonoured an honest woman, stole from her, and finally deserted her. How much of the father lived in the son?
“John!”
The voice of Peter Busket, one of the servants, broke in on my thoughts. I turned to see his thickset, greying figure, twisting his felt cap in his hands.
Peter had never looked so nervous in my presence. He was a naturally cheerful man, and always took a paternal interest in me. When I was a child, he placed my first wooden practice sword in my hand, and taught me how to handle a bow.
“John,” he repeated, “your cousin William is here.”
I went cold. William was the son of my mother’s brother, Sir Reginald Ulverton, the Baron of Steeping. Sir Reginald held a small castle at Steeping, as well five other manors, and had cast greedy eyes at Kingshook ever since the death of his brother-in-law. Sir John Daubeney had no close kin to leave his estate to, and before he departed on his final campaign made everything over to his wife.
With no living kin or legitimate issue, Sir John’s manor passed to my uncle, who in turn bestowed it on his son. William was fifteen now, almost a man grown, and I lived in fear of him taking up residence at Kingshook. Spoiled and indulged by his father to the point of ruin, he had already gained a dark reputation as a drunk and a womaniser. There was some talk of him violating the daughter of a local bailiff, though the matter was quickly hushed up. Enough gold, pressed into the right hands, can smother most evils.
“Fetch my sword,” I ordered Peter, “and stand by while I talk to him. Is he in drink?”
Peter nodded. “Then fetch the grooms as well,” I added. “If he has any brains at all, he won’t try anything with witnesses on hand.”
He ran to get my broadsword, while I composed myself and walked slowly to meet my cousin.
I could hear his voice, raised in drunken anger, before I reached the courtyard.
“Where is he?” William shouted. “Where is the bastard of Kingshook? Why does he hide?”
Kingshook Hall was an old-fashioned place, built in the time of Rufus and not much changed since. The grey, weathered stones had endured the buffets of centuries. They probably endure still, though I have not clapped eyes on the place for many years.
I paused by the stair to the door while Peter came running with my sword, snug in its leather scabbard. It had belonged to my maternal grandfather, and had a nick
two-thirds up the blade - caused, the old knight always claimed, when it rebounded off a Frenchman’s bascinet at Crécy. His sword was mine now, along with all the other bits and pieces of war-gear in the armoury.
I buckled on the scabbard and emerged to face William. “Lower your voice, cousin,” I said, “here I am.”
He scowled at me. William was a tall, well-built youth, splendidly dressed in a black velvet doublet, black calfskin gloves and boots and a red mantle. A gold ring flashed in his right ear, and a golden pendant in the shape of a rearing lion, the arms of his house, hung from a silver necklace round his well-muscled throat.
This picture of noble elegance was marred by a streak of vomit on the mantle, and William’s swollen, empurpled features. Never handsome at the best of times, after a surfeit of ale and wine he resembled an angry toad on the verge of bursting.
He had come alone, mounted on a beautiful, soft-mouthed chestnut destrier. I had seen him ride the beast before, in the lists at Steeping, and been filled with envy. He was a purebred war-horse, worth some three or even four hundred pounds. Any man of gentle birth would have been proud to own him.
My cousin was no gentleman, despite his noble birth. The horse’s flanks were cruelly slashed by his spurs, and blood trickled down onto the cobbles.
William’s eyes, full of drunken menace, struggled to focus on me. “You,” he muttered thickly, “bastard. I want you out of Kingshook by sundown. Go. Vanish, like your father did.”
I folded my arms. “If I refuse?” I asked, with a sweet smile.
His fingers closed about the hilt of his sword.
“Refuse,” he snarled, “and I will come back with a troop of men-at-arms and a pack of hounds. We will flush you out, and hunt you like the vermin you are through Kingshook woods. I’ll take your head back to Steeping on the end of my lance. My father’s cook will boil away the flesh, so I may use it as a drinking vessel.”
Barbaric stuff, and incredibly foolish. How old Sir Reginald, one of the shrewdest landholders in Sussex, managed to sire such an oaf is beyond me.
I treated William’s threats with the respect they deserved, and laughed in his face.
That was a mistake. For a moment I thought he might suffer a seizure. He turned a livid shade of crimson, and bared his yellow teeth.
“Whoreson!” he grunted, and half-slid, half-tumbled off his horse. I moved to help him, but he was on his feet in an instant. Naked steel flashed in his hand.
Peter Busket and two of the grooms were on hand. None of them moved as William charged at me with murder in his eyes. They were only servants, of course, and didn’t dare intervene in a private affair between gentlemen, even if I barely qualified as such.
The brief fight started in drink, and ended in blood. My cousin was strong as a bull, but slow. His ale-sodden state made him slower still, and I easily sidestepped his broadsword as it swept down to chop me in half.
“Enough!” I shouted. “Would you slay your own kin?”
He didn’t seem to hear me. I retreated and drew my sword as he came on again, snorting like a wild boar.
Our blades met with a crunch of steel. He overbalanced, and I might have laid him open from shoulder to waist, but had no desire to kill. It would be murder, or at least his family would say so, and their word would count for more than any low-born witnesses.
My cousin was in poor condition for one so young and trained to arms, while I was fresh and light on my feet. For a time I skipped around him, and hoped he might see sense when his breath gave out.
He made one final effort. With a wordless roar, he hurled his sword like a javelin at my chest. I sprang aside, and in the next moment his fingers were at my throat. Wine-thick breath gusted over me as his knee slammed into my crotch. His free hand caught my wrist and squeezed it like a vice.
My grandfather’s sword dropped to the ground. The hot pain in my groin made me gasp. Both his hands were at my throat now, thumbs pressed hard into my windpipe.
Sweet Christ, he was strong. He might have throttled me to death, if one of the grooms hadn’t rushed forward and pressed the hilt of a dagger into my right hand.
I slid the knife into his side, under the ribs, through layers of velvet and linen and soft, greasy flesh.
His gooseberry eyes, mere inches from my own, widened. The irises contracted, and a high-pitched moan escaped his blubbery lips. His hands loosened on my neck. I stabbed him again, this time in the heart. The blade was good and sharp, and sank to the hilt in his chest.
William took a step backwards. And another. The knife was still stuck in his body. He reached out for me, his hands open, and a bead of bloody foam drooled from the corner of his mouth. With a sigh, he toppled over like a felled tree.
Horrified, I clapped my hands over my mouth. They were spotted with William’s blood.
My kinsman’s blood. My blood.
3.
I panicked. Even as William yielded up the ghost, I ran to seize the reins of his destrier. Fortunately the beast had little affection for his late master, and stood quiet as I climbed into the saddle.
“Money,” I shouted at Peter, “enough money for three days, food and water, and my fur-trimmed cloak. Get them!”
He snapped his fingers at the grooms. One, Wilfred, ran inside the house. More servants peered out of the windows and the doorway, and wailed in alarm when they saw William’s body.
“What shall we do with that?” Peter demanded in a hoarse voice. His finger shook as he pointed at my dead cousin.
“Lay him out in the hall,” I replied, “when the High Sheriff and his men-at-arms come, as they will, tell them I slew William in fair fight. No blame will attach to you or the rest of the household.”
Had I kept a clear head, I might have stayed and defended myself in court. Instead I reacted like a fool - and, let us speak plain, a coward - and thought only of escape.
Wilfred returned with a bag of silver pennies, my cloak and some bread and cheese hastily stuffed into a sack. I took the money and food, donned the cloak and turned the destrier’s head to face south.
I was careful to handle him gently, mindful of the wounds on his flanks, and he responded. As I steered him onto the road that led south, towards Sundridge and the edge of the Weald, I heard a shout behind me.
It was Alan, the groom who had pressed a dagger in my hand at the crucial moment, and saved my life. He was a lad of maybe fifteen summers, tall and awkward, all pimples and knees and elbows.
While his mate fetched my supplies from the house, he had gone to the stables and saddled his rouncy. To my dismay, his spotty face was alive with excitement.
“John!” Alan cried as he tried to climb aboard the beast, hopping with one foot caught in the stirrup while she led him in a circle, “let me come with you. You promised!”
I cursed the boy’s memory. Once, while maudlin in drink, I had promised we would one day ride off to the wars together.
“No,” I said firmly, “they will outlaw me, boy. I would not bear your mother’s curse to the gallows.”
“My mother died two winters back,” he replied smugly, finally managing to cock his leg over the saddle.
“We will go to France,” he said, while Peter and three other servants carried my cousin’s body inside the house, “the Sheriff can’t follow our tracks across the Channel. A hard road lays ahead. You will need a friend.”
He was a stubborn, brave youth, and I could not afford to waste time in argument. With a shrug, I turned my face back to the road and dug in my heels. The destrier surged into life under me, and I rode on without looking to see if Alan followed.
My plan, inasmuch as I had one, was to follow the road south, through the forest of the Weald, past Tonbridge and hence to some port, probably Hastings, where I could buy passage across the sea to Calais.
There I would think on my next move. I knew King Henry was planning his next French campaign, and would sail to Normandy before the autumn.
It was too dangerous to joi
n his army at Southampton. Word of my outlawry might go before me, and I would arrive at the port only to be arrested and tried for murder. Far safer to travel to Calais via another route, and join the King when he landed on French soil. In the midst of a campaign, with a constant need for fresh soldiers, he was unlikely to enquire too deeply into the misdeeds of one poor man-at-arms.
Haste was vital, so I tore past the pretty little village of Sundridge at a hard gallop and approached the borders of the Weald. I gave the village itself a wide berth, and crossed the double stream of the Darent, a little to the north, where the land swells to a ridge of chalk hills.
Alan struggled to keep up. His rouncy wasn’t fit to keep up with my destrier, and he was like to kill the beast under him before we reached Tonbridge.
With a muttered curse, I stopped just before the edge of the woods. My destrier snorted and pawed the ground impatiently, frustrated at being reined in just when he had hit his stride.
My admiration did not extend to Alan. “Only a fool refuses to heed a warning,” I said, “turn back, while you can.”
He shook his head. “No. I am your servant until death.”
I might have forced him to leave, since I was armed and he carried no weapon. In truth, I was reluctant to be alone, especially with the darkness of the Weald stretching before me.
The shortest route to the coast led straight through the forest, which had covered the western part of Sussex since ancient times. I gave my reins a twitch and followed the highway where it led under the trees.
Alan continued to follow, and the hoofs of our horses clopped on the rough surface of the road. Save for their echo, and the jingle of harness, all was eerily silent.
I had always been frightened of the Weald. As a child I was discouraged from venturing into its shadowy depths by tales of monsters and bogeymen, as well as the very real threat of outlaws. It was also home to some of the finest archers and woodsmen in England, whose ancestors played a vital role in defending the land from the French. When Prince Louis, son of Philip Augustus, landed with an army to take the English crown for himself, his knights were shot down like deer as they blundered through the Weald. Not for the last time, the proud nobles of France were humbled by the English peasant and his bow.
The Wolf Cub Page 3