1356

by Bernard Cornwell

  The King of France was walking towards the widest gap in the hedge where he could see the great banner that proclaimed the presence of the Prince of Wales. His son Philippe was beside him and his bodyguard all around him. Seventeen other men were dressed in the king’s colours, dressed to deceive the English. They were all renowned knights, members of the king’s Order of the Star, and the hope was that the English would die in attacking them and so weaken themselves. ‘You stay close beside me, Philippe,’ the king said to his son.

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘Tonight we’ll feast in Poitiers,’ the king said. ‘We’ll have music!’

  ‘And prisoners?’

  ‘Dozens of prisoners,’ King Jean said. ‘Hundreds of prisoners! And we’ll make you a nightshirt from the Prince of Wales’s jupon.’

  Philippe laughed. He carried a sword and a shield, though no one expected him to fight, and four Knights of the Star were detailed to protect him.

  The front ranks of the French were converging on the gap in the hedge now. ‘Montjoie Saint Denis!’ they shouted, ‘Montjoie Saint Denis!’ The attacking line was ragged. The enthusiastic had forged ahead, the reluctant had deliberately slowed, and the French line was misshapen. The English were silent. The king had a glimpse of them through the ranks in front of him and saw a grey line

  of battered steel beneath tattered flags. ‘Saint Denis,’ he shouted, ‘Montjoie Saint Denis!’

  The Cardinal Bessières was a hundred paces behind the French attack. He was still mounted and escorted by Father Marchant and three men-at-arms. The cardinal was livid. The French army was supposedly led by men who knew their business, men experienced in warfare, yet the first attacks by horsemen had failed utterly, the second attack had been repulsed, and now at least half of the army had left the field, some without even trying to fight. What should have been an easy victory was being weighed in the balance, yet despite his anger he was still confident. The king’s battle was the strongest of the three and filled with men of high reputation. They were fresh, the enemy was tired, and with God’s help the king should prevail. The oriflamme still flew. The cardinal considered saying a prayer, but he had never been confident of God’s help, preferring to rely on his own intelligence and cunning. ‘When this debacle is over,’ he said to Father Marchant, ‘make sure you retrieve la Malice from that Scottish animal.’

  ‘Of course, Your Eminence.’

  And to the cardinal’s surprise the recollection of Saint Peter’s sword gave him a sudden surge of hope. He, above all men, knew the tawdry nature of most relics and the deceit that such things played on the credulous. Any scrap of old bone, whether from a goat, a bullock, or an executed thief, could be palmed off as the knuckle of a martyr, yet despite his scepticism he felt a certainty that la Malice was indeed the sword of the fisherman. It could not fail. The angels themselves would fight for France, and victory would propel Louis Bessières onto the throne of Saint Peter.

  ‘Now go!’ the cardinal called to the men in front, though they were too far away to hear him.

  And the French charged. ‘Montjoie Saint Denis!’

  Thomas rode north along the English line. He could hear the French approaching, their big drums pounding the air, and he was curious to discover what was happening. So far his battle had been the short, vicious repulse of the horsemen by the ford, and then the equally short and savage battle inside the hedge. What had happened on the rest of the field was a mystery, and so he rode to find out and he saw, through the widest gap in the hedge, another French attack surging forward. What was strange was that there were no more Frenchmen on the distant skyline, except for a scatter of horsemen who appeared, like him, to be watching the battle.

  He was about to turn back to tell his men what he had discovered and to warn them to be ready for another fight along the hedge when a voice shouted. ‘Are you an archer?’

  Thomas assumed the question was directed at someone else and ignored it, then it struck him as strange that the question should have been asked in French. He turned and saw a man in black livery on which a yellow shield was decorated with silver scallops. The man was staring straight at Thomas.

  ‘I’m an archer,’ Thomas called back.

  ‘I need mounted archers!’ The man was young, but had an unmistakable air of confidence and authority. ‘Bring hand weapons!’

  ‘I can give you at least sixty archers,’ Thomas called back.

  ‘Be quick!’

  The French came through the gap, screaming their war cry and, just as before, they crashed into the English line and, just as before, steel met steel. ‘Hold fast!’ a man bellowed in English. ‘Hold the line!’ Trumpets raked the sky with noise, the drummers hammered their skins, the war cries were shouted, and Thomas rode, only stopping when he reached the southern end of the line, which was still unengaged. ‘Karyl! It’ll be the same fight as before! Just hold them! Sam! I want every archer on his horse. Bring axes, swords, maces, anything that kills, and hurry!’

  Thomas wondered who the man in the black jupon was or what in God’s name he had just agreed to do. His men were running to the tree line where Keane had picketed the horses. ‘Keane,’ Thomas shouted, ‘give me a poleaxe!’

  The Irishman brought a poleaxe, then mounted his own horse. ‘I’m coming. Where are we going?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘A mystery ride, is it? We used to do that at home. Just ride off and see where we ended. Usually an alehouse.’

  ‘I doubt that’s our destination,’ Thomas said, then raised his voice. ‘Come with me!’ He kicked the horse back north. To his left the battle was loud. The English line was four men deep and it was holding. The men in the rear ranks were bracing the front rank, or thrusting with shortened lances between their comrades’ bodies, while behind the line two horsemen were jabbing lances at any enemy whose visor was lifted. There was a mass of Frenchmen in the hedge’s gap where banners waved, but most were still beyond the hedge, waiting for their leading men to hack out a space they could fill.

  ‘Follow me!’ the man in the black jupon shouted. He had sixty or so men wearing his black and yellow colours, and Thomas and his archers followed them into the trees. More archers joined, all following the man in black northwards. Thomas saw Robbie and Roland riding together and he kicked his horse to catch up with them.

  ‘What are we doing?’

  ‘Attacking from behind,’ Robbie said. He grinned.

  ‘Who’s leading?’

  ‘The Captal de Buch,’ Roland said.

  ‘Captal?’

  ‘A Gascon title. He has reputation.’

  My God, Thomas thought, but he needs to be good. As far as he could see the captal had fewer than two hundred men and he planned to assault the French army? And most of those men were mounted archers, not trained men-at-arms, but if the captal felt any trepidation he did not betray it. He led the men down the hill, staying in the woods and going far behind the Earl of Salisbury’s battle that defended the right-hand end of the English line. The fighting was fierce there. Much of the earl’s position was beyond the hedge, and the slope leading to the English line was gentle, and so the French assailed around the hedge’s northern end to be met by men-at-arms and archers. Trenches trapped some Frenchmen. Archers fought with hand weapons, using their bow-given strength to batter armoured men. Thomas had a glimpse of that fight, then he was in the trees again. Acorns crunched under the hooves of his horse. Men ducked beneath the branches of oak and chestnuts. A handful of the men-at-arms carried long lances that had to be steered carefully between the thick trees, but they were not going fast. The strength of the horses needed to be conserved and so the captal led them at a trot, confident that he was hidden from the enemy. The sound of battle faded as they rode farther north.

  They rode into a valley, crossed a trickle of a stream and climbed the further slope that was a field of stubble. Trees screened the northern and western skylines. Just before they reached the northern trees, the captal turn
ed his horse to the left and rode into a thicket of oak that crowned a hill. When Thomas ducked into the trees he could see that the low hills to the north were covered with retreating men. Why? Had the French suffered a defeat that had escaped his notice? Yet there they were, hundreds and hundreds of men going northwards while the battle was still being fought on the English hill.

  A small lizard skittered across Thomas’s path. Was that a good omen or a bad? He wished he still had the dried dog paw he used to wear as a talisman about his neck, a paw he had boasted to be a relic of Saint Guinefort, a dog that had been declared a saint. How could a dog be a saint? He made the sign of the cross, remembering that he had not confessed before this battle and he had not received any absolution. If he was killed, he thought, he would go to hell. He touched the paw again and curbed his horse. All the horses were standing now, pawing the ground and tossing their heads.

  ‘Standard bearer!’ the captal called.

  ‘Sire?’

  ‘The English flag.’

  The standard bearer unfurled the white flag with the bold red cross of Saint George.

  ‘Weapons, gentlemen,’ the captal said in heavily accented English. He grinned and his teeth looked very white against his sun-darkened skin, which was shadowed by his helmet. ‘Now let’s destroy them!’

  With those words he spurred his horse out of the trees. The men-at-arms and archers followed and as Thomas rode into the sunlight he suddenly saw the French army crowded at the hedge, and he saw that the captal had led them in a wide circle so that they were now riding at the French from the rear. The men-at-arms with lances held the weapons upright. All the long lances bore a black and yellow pennant: the captal’s colours. There was a small hedge in front of them, but there were gaps, and the horsemen streamed through, re-forming on the far side as the captal spurred into a canter. Thomas’s world was the thud of hooves, a devil’s thud counterpointing the drums of the French, who seemed oblivious of the horsemen coming from behind.

  They were riding on grassland now. Thomas kicked his horse into a canter. Not far. The French were just two bowshots away and the one hundred and sixty horsemen were spreading out. Down into the small combe, then up the slope where the horses trampled the broken grape vines. The flag of Saint George was high, the lances were lowered to the charge, the spurs went back, and a man screamed, ‘Saint George!’

  ‘Saint Quiteira!’ a Gascon shouted.

  ‘And kill them!’ the captal bellowed, and the horsemen let their destriers and coursers run, and the French rear ranks, where the more timid men sheltered, turned to see the great beasts and armoured men crashing down on them and they broke even before the charge slammed home. Flags fell, men began to run, clumsy in their armour, and then the horses were among them and the lances slid into steel-clad bodies and axes swung to splinter backplates and shatter bone and to mist the autumn air with blood, and Thomas heard himself shouting like a fiend and feeling utter exhilaration. ‘Saint George!’ and he slammed the spike at the end of the poleaxe into a Frenchman’s helmet and let the momentum of his horse drag the weapon free. A nakerer let his vast drum fall and ran, but a horseman turned and casually split the man’s skull with a sword before turning back to attack a French knight. He swung again and his sword shattered the Frenchman’s sword. A horse reared and beat a man down with its hooves. Sam was killing crossbowmen with an axe. ‘I hate bloody crossbowmen!’ he shouted and dropped the axe blade onto a man’s head. ‘Like cracking an egg!’ he shouted at Thomas. ‘Who’s next?’

  ‘Stay together,’ the captal shouted. They were only one hundred and sixty strong, and the King of France’s battle was three thousand men, but the one hundred and sixty had shattered the rear ranks of the French, who were now desperately running back towards the west. The front ranks, fighting beyond the hedge, heard the panic, and the whole battle moved backwards as the English line roared in triumph and moved forward. More horsemen appeared, this time from the southern end of the line, a more ragged charge of men coming to complete the panic. And the French had indeed panicked. They were fleeing, all of them, and the captal bellowed at his men to pull back.

  A hundred and sixty men had broken an army, but they were still hugely outnumbered, and the French were realising it and forming lines to resist the horsemen. Three of them caught Pitt, the taciturn archer, and Thomas watched, horrified, as they cut his horse down with axes, dragged Pitt from the saddle and beat him to death with maces. Thomas rode at them, reaching them too late, but swinging the poleaxe wildly and slamming the blade into a man’s neck. ‘Bastards!’ he shouted, then twisted his horse fast away from their axe blows. He followed the captal north, just out of range of the French weapons. The prince’s men had come through the hedge and were falling on the French who again broke in panic. They fled, pursued by the dismounted men-at-arms coming in ever greater numbers through the hedge, and by the horsemen who had appeared to the south.

  It was like shepherding a flock of sheep. The horsemen rode and threatened and the French made no effort to re-form, but kept going westwards. The oriflamme had vanished, but Thomas could see the blue and gold of the French royal standard still flying in the centre of the disorganised mass.

  More and more of the English and Gascon men-at-arms had fetched their horses, and more and more came to join the pursuit. Down into the shallow valley they went, then up to the flat top of le Champ d’Alexandre from which the French had attacked that morning, and now it was the horsemen who attacked. Groups of men rode into the disorganised French, weapons swinging, horses snapping at men, and the French panic grew desperate as their ranks were split. Small groups stayed together and tried to defend themselves. The nobles were shouting that they were rich, that they surrendered. English archers, their bows discarded, were using their huge strength to wield axes, maces, and hammers. Men bellowed in bloodlust or in terror. All order had now vanished from the French, who were being broken into smaller and smaller groups assailed by battle-maddened men with sweaty faces and gritted teeth who only wanted to kill and kill. And so they did. A Frenchman fended off two archers, using his sword to foil their axes, then he stepped back and tripped on a fallen man and went down, and the archers jumped forward, axes swinging and the Frenchman screamed as a blade crashed into his shoulder; he tried to stand, fell back again and swung his sword in a great sweep that parried an axe. Thomas could see the man gritting his teeth, his whole face distorted with his desperate efforts. He parried another axe, then cried out as the second archer chopped into the meat of his thigh. He tried to lunge his sword at that man, spitting out teeth he had shattered because he had bitten down so hard, but his desperate lunge was parried, then an axe crunched down into his face and a poleaxe spike rammed into his belly and his whole body jerked in a great spasm as he died. For a moment his helmet’s open face filled with blood, then it drained away as the two archers knelt to search his body.

  Keane had dismounted and was standing over a corpse whose belly had been split open by the Irishman’s poleaxe. The man’s guts had been trampled into the stubble, while next to the corpse, and wearing the same livery of yellow circles on a blue field, was an older man with a pale, lined face, grey hair, and a neatly trimmed beard. He wore plate armour with a golden crucifix blazoned on his breastplate. He looked terrified. He had plainly surrendered to Keane, because the Irishman was holding the man’s helmet that had a cross on its crest and a long blue plume trailing behind. ‘He says he’s the Archbishop of Sens!’ Keane said to Thomas.

  ‘Then you’re rich. Hold onto him! Make sure no one steals him from you.’

  ‘This fellow tried to protect him,’ Keane looked down at the disembowelled man. ‘Wasn’t a clever decision, really.’

  There was a wild melee in the centre of the field and Thomas, looking that way, saw the French royal standard still flying. Men were hacking at the standard’s defenders, wild in their savagery as they tried to cut through to King Jean. Thomas ignored it, riding southwards to see men fleeing down the
hill towards the Miosson, but the Earl of Warwick’s archers were waiting there and the Frenchmen were fleeing towards death.

  A man hailed Thomas and he turned to see Jake, one of his archers, leading a prisoner on a horse. The man wore a jupon showing a clenched red fist against a field of orange and white stripes, and Thomas could not help but laugh. It was Joscelyn of Berat, the man sworn to retake Castillon d’Arbizon. ‘He says he’ll only surrender to you,’ Jake said, ‘on account that I’m not a gentleman.’

  ‘Nor am I,’ Thomas said, then spoke in French: ‘You are my prisoner,’ he told Joscelyn.

  ‘Fate,’ Joscelyn said resignedly.

  ‘Keane!’ Thomas bellowed. ‘Another one here to guard! Look after them both, they’re rich!’ Thomas looked back to Jake. ‘Guard them well!’ Men squabbled over the ownership of prisoners, but Thomas reckoned there were enough Hellequin to keep the archbishop and the Count of Berat from being poached by other men.

  Thomas spurred northwards. More Frenchmen were fleeing that way, desperate to reach the safety of Poitiers. A few, very few, had managed to find their horses or else had taken a horse from an Englishman. Most ran, or rather stumbled, harried all the way by vengeful pursuers, but one man rode straight towards Thomas, who recognised the piebald destrier and then the red heart of Douglas, though the surcoat was so sodden with blood that for a moment Thomas thought it was coloured black. ‘Robbie!’ he called, glad to see his friend, then he saw that the rider was not Robbie, but Sculley.

  ‘He’s dead!’ Sculley shouted. ‘The traitor’s dead! And it’s your turn now.’ He was carrying la Malice, the blade looking pathetically rusted and weak, but it was also discoloured by blood. ‘It looks like shit,’ Sculley said, ‘but it’s a canny weapon.’ He had lost his helmet, and his long, lank hair rattled with bones. ‘I took wee Robbie’s head off,’ Sculley said. ‘One cut of the magic sword and wee Robbie went to hell. See?’ He grinned and pointed to his saddle where Thomas saw Robbie’s bloody head was hanging by its hair. ‘I like a wee keepsake from a fight, and the sight