1356

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘We should have let them starve,’ the dauphin said as they neared the hedge.

  ‘Sire?’ a man shouted, unable to hear the dauphin’s voice over the sound of drums, trumpets and cheers.

  ‘They have a strong position!’

  ‘All the more glory when we beat them, sire.’

  The dauphin thought that remark stupid, but he held his tongue, and just then a flicker of white caught his eye and the man who had made the stupid remark reached over and slammed down the prince’s visor so hard that the dauphin was momentarily deafened and half stunned. ‘Arrows, sire!’ the man shouted.

  The arrows were being shot from the ends of the hedge, slantwise across the advancing battle. More arrows came from small groups of archers who guarded the gaps in the hedge. The dauphin heard the missiles thumping into shields or clanging on armour. He could hardly see now. The visor had bars close together, his world was dark, sliced by bright sunlit slits, and he sensed, rather than saw, that the men about him had speeded up. They were closing ranks in front of him and he was too weak to force his way past them.

  ‘Montjoie Saint Denis!’ the men-at-arms shouted, and went on shouting so there was a great roar, an unending roar as the warriors of France hurried into the hedge’s gap. The archers there had retreated. It occurred to the prince that the English were silent, and just then they shouted their war cry. ‘Saint George!’

  And there was the first harsh sound of steel on steel.

  And screams.

  And so the carnage began.

  ‘Fetch your horses!’ the Earl of Oxford called to Thomas. The earl, who was second in command to the Earl of Warwick, wanted most of the men who had protected the ford to return to the high ground. ‘I’ll leave Warwick’s archers here,’ he said to Thomas, ‘but you take your men up the hill!’

  It was a long way up the hill and it would be much quicker to ride. ‘Horses!’ Thomas shouted across the river. Servants and grooms brought them over the ford, past the upturned wagon. Keane, riding a mare bareback, led them.

  ‘Have the bastards gone?’ the Irishman asked, looking past the dead and dying horses to where the French knights had vanished in the trees.

  ‘Find out for me,’ Thomas said. He did not want to abandon the ford only to discover that the French had renewed their attack on the baggage train.

  Keane looked surprised, but whistled his two dogs and led them northwards towards the trees. The Earl of Oxford was sending Warwick’s men-at-arms back up the steep hill and shouting at them to carry full waterskins. ‘They’re thirsty up there! Take water if you can! But hurry!’

  Thomas, mounted on the horse he had captured outside Montpellier, found a wagon waiting to cross the river once the overturned cart was cleared away. The wagon bed was filled with barrels. ‘What was in those?’ he asked the driver.

  ‘Wine, your honour.’

  ‘Fill them with water, then get the damned wagon up the hill.’

  The driver looked aghast. ‘These horses will never make the hill, not with a load of full barrels!’

  ‘Then get extra horses. More men. Do it! Or I’ll come back and find you. And when you’ve done it once, come back for more.’

  The man grumbled under his breath, Thomas ignored it and went back to the ford where his men were now mounted. ‘Up the hill,’ Thomas said, then saw Genevieve, Bertille, and Hugh were among the horsemen. ‘You three! Stay here! Stay with the baggage!’ He kicked back his heels and put the horse to the slope, going past Warwick’s men who were climbing in their armour. ‘Stirrup them!’ Thomas called. He beckoned a man-at-arms who gratefully took hold of one stirrup leather and let the horse pull him up the hill.

  Keane came back fast, looked for Thomas and saw him among the men streaming upwards. He kicked back his heels so the mare caught up. ‘They’ve gone,’ the Irishman said. ‘But there are thousands up there!’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Top of the valley. Thousands! Jesus!’

  ‘Get to the top of the hill,’ Thomas said, ‘and find a priest.’

  ‘A priest?’

  The promised priest had never arrived at the ford. ‘The men need shriving,’ Thomas said. ‘Find a priest and tell him we never heard mass.’ There would be no time for a mass now, but at least the dying could receive the last rites.

  Keane whistled to the hounds and kicked back his heels.

  And Thomas heard the crash from the hilltop as men drove into men. Steel on steel, steel on iron, steel on flesh. He climbed.

  The dauphin’s battle aimed itself at the centre of the English line. The widest gap in the hedge was there and, as the French came closer, they saw the largest banners flying above the waiting men-at-arms beyond the gap, and those banners included the impudent flag that quartered the French royal arms with England’s lions. That banner proclaimed that the Prince of Wales was there and, through the slits in their visors, the French could see the prince mounted on a horse, sitting close behind the line, and the battle anger was on them now. Not just anger, but terror, and for some men joy. Those men worked their way to the front rank. They were hungry for fighting, they were confident, and they were savagely good at their trade. Many other men were drunk, but the wine had given them bravado, and the arrows were slicing in from left and right, striking shields, crumpling on armour, sometimes finding a weak spot, but the attack flowed around the fallen men and, so very close now, the French broke into a run, screaming, and fell on the English.

  That first rush was the most important. That was when the shortened lances could knock the enemy over, when the axes and hammers and maces would be given extra impetus by the charge, and so the dauphin’s men screamed at the tops of their voices as they charged, as they swung, thrust, and chopped their weapons.

  And the English line went back.

  They were forced back by the fierceness of the charge and by the weight of men who crammed through the gap, but though they went back, they did not break. Blades crashed on shields. Axes and maces slashed down. Lead-weighted steel crumpled helmets, shattered skulls, forced blood and brains to spurt through split metal, and men fell and in falling made obstacles, and other men tripped on them. The impact of the charge was slowed, men tried to stand and were stunned by blows, but the French had forced their way through the gap and now were widening the fight, attacking left and right as more men came through the hedge.

  The English and Gascons were still being driven back, but slowly now. The initial impact had left men dead, wounded, bleeding, and moaning, but the line was not broken. The commanders, their horses close behind the dismounted men-at-arms, were shouting at them to stay closed up. To keep the line. And the French were trying to break the line, to cut and hammer their way through the shields so they could shatter the English into small groups that could be surrounded and slaughtered. Men hacked with axes, screamed obscenities, thrust with lances, swung maces, and the shields splintered, but the line held. It went backwards under the pressure, and more Frenchmen came through the gap, but the Englishmen and Gascons were fighting with the desperation of trapped men and the confidence of troops who had spent months together, men who knew and trusted each other, and who understood what waited for them if the line broke.

  ‘Welcome to the devil’s slaughteryard, sire,’ Sir Reginald Cobham said to the Prince of Wales. The two men were on horseback, watching from just behind the line, and Sir Reginald saw how the fight was slackening. He had expected the French to come on horseback and had been apprehensive when he understood they intended to fight on foot. ‘They’ve learned their lesson,’ he had remarked drily to the prince. He had watched as the lines crashed together and seen how the savage French charge had failed to rip the English and Gascons apart, but now it was hard to tell one side from the other, they were so close. The rear ranks of both sides thrust forward, crushing the front-rank men against their opponents and giving them small room to swing a weapon. The enemy was still forcing their way through the gaps in the hedge, widening their attack, but
they were not breaking through the stubborn line. They were either crushed against their enemy, or else a group of men would assault, batter and cut, then step back to catch their breath and appraise their enemy. They were calling insults rather than fighting with fury, and Sir Reginald understood that. Attackers and defenders were each recovering from the initial shock, but more Frenchmen were still coming through the hedge’s gap and the fight would get grimmer now, because the attacks would be more deliberate and the English, thirsty and hungry, would tire faster.

  ‘We do well, Sir Reginald!’ the prince said cheerfully.

  ‘We must go on doing well, sire.’

  ‘Is that the boy prince?’ The Prince of Wales had seen the golden coronet surmounting a polished helmet in the French ranks and knew, from the largest banner, that the dauphin must be part of this attack.

  ‘A prince, certainly,’ Sir Reginald said, ‘or maybe a substitute?’

  ‘Real prince or not,’ the real English prince said, ‘it would be courteous to pay him my compliments.’ He grinned, swung his leg over his saddle’s high cantle, and dropped to the turf where he reached out to his squire. ‘Shield,’ he said, stretching out his left hand, ‘and an axe, I think.’

  ‘Sire!’ Sir Reginald called, then fell silent. The prince was doing his duty and the devil was rolling the dice, and advising the prince to be cautious would achieve nothing.

  ‘Sir Reginald?’ the prince asked.

  ‘Nothing, sire, nothing.’

  The prince half smiled. ‘What will be, Sir Reginald, will be.’ He snapped down his visor and pushed through the English ranks to face the French. His chosen knights, there to protect the heir to England’s throne, followed.

  The enemy saw his bright jupon, recognised the insolent French arms quartered on his broad chest, and gave a roar of challenge and anger.

  Then charged again.

  Fifteen

  Thomas reached the hilltop just as the battle was widening. The French had forced their way through the gaps in the hedge and were spreading along its length, while others were hacking through the thick brambles to make new gaps. Somewhere to Thomas’s right a man shouted, ‘Archers! Archers! Here!’

  Thomas slid from his saddle. His men were arriving in small groups and adding themselves to the left of the English line, which was not yet engaged, but he ran behind the line to where the call had sounded. Then he saw what had provoked the shout. Two crossbowmen had found a way to the hedge’s centre with their pavisiers, and they were shooting into the Earl of Warwick’s men. He paused to string his bow, placing one end on a protruding tree root and bending the other with his left hand so he could slip the loop of the cord onto the nocked horn at the bow’s upper end. Most men could not even bend a bow sufficiently to string it, but he did it without thinking, then took a flesh arrow from his bag, shouldered his way through the rearmost ranks and drew the cord. Both crossbowmen were about thirty paces away and both were being sheltered by their vast shields, which meant they were cranking the handles that rewound their cords. ‘With you,’ a voice said, and he saw Roger of Norfolk, known to everyone as Poxface, had joined him with his bow drawn. ‘Yours is the one on the left,’ Thomas said.

  The shield of the man on the right suddenly swung to one side and the crossbowman was there, kneeling, his weapon aimed at the English men-at-arms. Thomas loosed, and the arrow took the French archer in the face. The man fell backwards, his finger reflexively tightening on the trigger so that his crossbow shot, and the bolt seared into the sky, then the man beside him spun away with Poxface’s arrow in his chest. Thomas had already drawn again and sunk an arrow into the back of the fleeing pavisier. ‘I love archers,’ one of the men-at-arms said.

  ‘You can marry me,’ Poxface said, and there was a burst of laughter, then a shout because a mass of Frenchmen was coming along the hedge’s inner face.

  ‘Hold them back, fellows, hold them back!’ a voice roared. The Earl of Oxford was behind the line now. His horse had a streak of blood on its rump where the stump of a crossbow bolt showed. Thomas pushed his way free of the tight ranks and ran back to the left where his men-at-arms were extending the line.

  ‘Close up to the hedge!’ Thomas called.

  Keane was collecting abandoned horses, picketing them to a low oak branch. The archers were stringing their bows, though they had no targets because the men-at-arms concealed the enemy. ‘Sam! Watch the end of the hedge!’ Thomas called. ‘Let me know if the bastards try to come around.’ He doubted they would, the slope steepened there, which would make it a difficult place for the French to attack, but the archers could hold that flank against anything but the most determined assault.

  The danger was inside the hedge where the French, sensing they were reaching the end of their enemy’s line, were making rushes. A group of men would assault together, screaming their war shout. The drums were still beating. Trumpets were braying beyond the hedge, encouraging the French to break this enemy. Break them and split them and drive them back into the forest where they could be hunted down and slaughtered. That would be vengeance for all the damage the English had caused across France, for the burned cottages and slaughtered livestock, for the captured castles and weeping widows, for the countless rapes and stolen treasures. And so they came with renewed anger.

  Thomas’s men-at-arms were fighting now. If they broke there was nothing beyond them, but Karyl was standing like a rock, daring the French to come within range of his mace. They dared. There was a shout, a rush, and men were beating at each other with axes, maces and war hammers. A Frenchman latched his poleaxe over Ralph of Chester’s espalier and pulled him hard, and the Englishman stumbled forward, dragged by the hook in his shoulder armour, and a mace slammed into the side of his helmet; he fell, and another Frenchman swung an axe to split his backplate. Thomas saw Ralph jerking; he could not hear his screams over the battle noise, but the mace slammed down again and Ralph went still. Karyl landed a glancing blow on the killer’s arm, just enough to drive him back, but the French came again, sensing victory, and the clash of steel on wood and steel on iron was deafening.

  Thomas laid his bow and his arrow bag at the tree line and forced his way into the line. There was an axe on the ground and he picked it up. ‘Get back,’ someone told him. Thomas wore nothing but mail and leather, and this was a place where men were sheathed in steel, but Thomas pushed into the second rank and used his archer’s strength to swing the axe overhead, bringing its weighted blade down hard onto a French helmet and the weapon went through plume, steel and skull. The axe had been swung with such force that its blade had bitten deep into the enemy’s chest cavity where it was trapped by a mangle of ribs, flesh, and steel. A mist of blood flared in the morning sun as Thomas tried to pull the weapon free, and a stout, broad-chested man wearing a snouted helmet saw his chance and rammed a shortened lance at Thomas’s belly. Arnaldus, the Gascon, hit the man with an axe, knocking his head sideways, and Thomas abandoned his axe and seized the lance, pulling it to drag the man into his ranks where he could be killed, and the man pulled back. Karyl swung the mace and the snout-visor was knocked free, dangling from one hinge, and the Frenchman still would not abandon the lance. He was snarling, screaming insults, and Karyl slammed his mace into the moustached face, crushing the nose and breaking teeth, and now the man, his face a mask of blood, tried to ram the lance forward again, but Karyl punched the mace a second time and Arnaldus brought his axe down onto the man’s shoulder, splitting his espalier, and the enemy went down onto his knees, spitting blood and teeth, and Arnaldus finished him with a mighty swing of the axe and kicked the kneeling body back towards the French.

  The battle was now shrunken to the distance a man’s weapon could reach. Enemy could smell enemy, smell the shit as bowels emptied in terror, smell the wine and ale on their breath, smell the blood that slicked the grass. There would be a brutal bout of fighting, then a pause as men pulled back and caught their breath. Thomas had picked up the shortened lance. He had no ide
a where his own weapons were, presumably on a packhorse that might have been brought up the hill. The lance must do for now. The French, of whom he could see perhaps a hundred close by, were watching through closed visors. Most wore a livery of pale blue with two red stars. He wondered which lord they served and whether the lord was among them. They watched, they judged, they were readying for another charge. Thomas’s archers were holding poleaxes or maces. The Welsh archers were singing a battle song in their own language. Thomas assumed it celebrated a victory over the English, but if it helped them break the French then they could sing of English defeats till hell froze over.

  ‘The line’s holding!’ the Earl of Oxford called from horseback. ‘Don’t let them break us!’

  A big man carrying a morningstar pushed his way to the front of the enemy line. He wore plate armour, and had no jupon, while his helmet was a visored bascinet spattered with blood. He wore a heavy sword in a belted scabbard. Most men abandoned their scabbards in battle, fearing it might trip them, but this enemy needed the scabbard to hold his sword while he wielded the monstrous morningstar, which was fouled with blood.

  The morningstar had a haft almost as long as a bow stave, while the head was an iron ball the size of a baby’s skull. A long steel spike protruded from the tip of the ball, while a dozen shorter spikes surrounded it. The man hefted the weapon. The snout of his visor moved from side to side as he looked along the line of the Hellequin. Two companions, both carrying small battered tournament shields, joined him; one was armed with a poleaxe, the other with a goupillon, which had a short wooden handle connected by a thick chain to a spiked metal ball. It was a flail. ‘They came here to die,’ the tall man with the morningstar said loudly enough for Thomas to hear, ‘so let’s oblige the bastards.’