The First Princess of Wales

by Karen Harper

  A cheer went up, echoed again and again farther down the line as his words were passed on. Beneath his tent, the battlement of which he was in charge—fifteen thousand noblemen at arms and four thousand yeomen archers in two divisions—rested after eating and drinking. Now that the rain had stopped, he could see the clever longbowmen taking out their carefully coiled, still-dry bowstrings from their conical metal hats and beginning to restring their weapons of stout English yew or ash. In earlier fierce battles with the French, the ruinous strength of the dreaded English longbows had saved the day, for the gray goose-feathered shafts pierced chain mail and armor alike as if they were mere velvet.

  Below him, down a little slope of shiny grass and scrub brush, stood the wild Welsh spearmen who had driven pointed stakes into the ground to halt mounted French charges. In the valley below, the English had also dug square, knee-deep holes to send the armored horses and metal men crashing to the slippery turf.

  As the prince and his men turned back to their tent to await the battle, Godfrey of Harcourt, the quick, wily Norman baron who was their chief advisor in this campaign, hurried up with a train of lightly armored men. It was partly for men like Godfrey that the English had invaded Normandy, because King Philip had confiscated the vast holdings of many such barons for their loyalty to the English king.

  “My dear prince, stirring words. Sacrebleu, magnifique! Edward le Roi, too, he rouses the men, he comforts and urges them on!”

  “Any word from our advance scouts, Godfrey?” the prince asked, cutting off any further flow of effusive praise. “There was word of their approach at three of the clock. The impetuous, conceited French probably deem they have daylight enough to attack, as it is but two hours later now.”

  “Word from the scouts, oui. The French approach apace, like dumb sheep to the slaughter, eh? Blessed Marie, this outlay is grande—the three battalions with your strength here and Arundel and Northampton’s men to your left and the king behind should his reserve be needed. Let them come on! C’est magnifique! That escape path through the forest of Crécy to the sea—bah! Here, here on this vast plain our grand victory lies, eh?”

  Prince Edward nodded, his heart beating wildly. Ordinarily such sweeping rhetoric from the clever, dark-eyed little man would seem foolish, overblown, but today—today! He could sense the moment despite the humid closeness of the air, feel the beginning of his new life out there where he would prove himself in heroic combat. For heaven and St. George! It must be his time to soar at last and nothing must stop him. Years of preparation, of dreaming, and desiring—such a flow of passion coursed through him that his mind tricked him by conjuring up a picture of the wild, alluring, yet unreachable Jeannette, just out of his final grasp and rough conquest.

  “Your Grace, your father le roi at the tent,” Godfrey of Harcourt interrupted his thoughts.

  They gathered in a circle, shoulder to shoulder, the best flower of knighthood and bloom of Plantagenet royalty England could offer that day. The king’s priest voiced a lengthy prayer while the men clanked greaves and swords by shifting anxiously from foot to foot. Yet even as they embraced stiff-armed and then disbanded to their final position, the low thunder of an approaching army seared the humid August air.

  The king moved toward his son at the last, and they faced each other eye to eye, both tall, blond, and heavy-shouldered, so alike in appearance but for age and the king’s golden, full beard.

  “Today, my Edward, the chance at last to win your spurs,” the king said, his voice gruff with emotion.

  “I shall not fail your hopes for me, Your Grace. I have never been more certain, more ready.”

  “Aye. It was a sore plight to try to outrun the thieving bastards further and so here we are. Your fine words when those blasted crows flew over were reported to me. Fine, fine words. By the rood, your mother and your family would be proud.”

  “They shall be proud of all of England’s pride on the morrow when this is all over.”

  The king’s gauntleted hand rested on the prince’s metal shoulder. “Listen to me well, Edward. I have taught you thus, and you must not forget even in the shift and swirl of onslaught—war cannot be all rules and grandeur, knightly heroics and such. At the tourney, aye, speak chivalry to the ladies, aye. But war—war is real, my son. Use your wits, your cleverness. Planning, as we have done well here is one thing, but tactics under charge and fierce duress is quite another. By the rood, my son, keep your wits, that is all.”

  He turned away and was immediately swallowed by his protective horde of armored knights. Aye, the prince knew the story well of how his sire had learned to trust wiles and not only chivalrous strategies on that terrible night the wild Scotsman they called the Black Douglas had sneaked into his tent to slice him to ribbons. The young king had only escaped with his life because his little priest threw his body at the Scotsman’s sword and died in his king’s stead. Defeated, humiliated, tricked in the Scots Wars, the young King Edward had vowed never to be so trapped again, and the son had learned the truth of that war lesson well—aye, and in dealing with deceitful women, also, Prince Edward told himself grimly.

  The English stood stalwartly in their positions upon the hill above the gentle valley hemmed in by forests. For over an hour, they watched the French approach and align themselves in perfectly balanced columns. By six of the clock, the enemy was assembled for a massive charge. Impatient, stamping French horses rimmed the southern entrance to the battlefield, and at the fore of Philip’s massive army, the whole feudal levy of northern France swollen by many mercenaries from Genoa, Luxembourg, and Bohemia, stood the well-trained Genoese crossbowmen. The call to arms by the French king Philip had even attracted the elderly king of Bohemia, a hero of chivalry whose fine reputation studded with glorious deeds Prince Edward greatly envied. Despite John of Bohemia’s blindness, no fiercer fighter was to be found.

  Precisely at six when the French made the movement to advance, a fourth miraculous sign lifted the spirits of the waiting English: from behind the glowering line of sullen gray clouds, a sinking golden sun poured its rays to warm the backs of the Englishmen—and blind the eyes of the attacking French.

  Too late, too late for everyone. With mingled shouts of “Montjoye St. Denis!” and the distant dip and tilt of banners and pennants dotted with the French fleurs-de-lis, the battle was enjoined.

  Prince Edward watched, tense and wide-eyed, the visor of his helmet lifted to gauge the movement and force of the initial attack. Fifteen thousand Genoese bowmen advanced confidently, pausing on three occasions, in their traditional manner, to stamp and shriek their challenge. Yet, when they came in range and lifted their huge crossbows to fire, the prince’s ensign fluttered a banner and the sky darkened, not with crows this time, but with English arrows from the stout yeomen’s long bows. Few French bolts reached the English lines as the Genoese fell like shiny, wet, brown leaves mowed down by a breath of iron-tipped wind. Again, again, at five times the rate of fire of the hand-cranked French crossbows, the English hailed their deadly arrows upon the devastated front ranks of the enemy. As the bows did their bloody work, screams and shrieks of agony mingled with cries of panic and the Italian mercenaries began a fierce retreat.

  The French knights beyond the fleeing bowmen hesitated, apparently astounded, and then moved forward in a huge, silver wall of horse and man with pennants flying and shields flaunted.

  “By St. George, Holland,” the prince yelled above the din, “they are riding down their own bowmen! Insanity—and death to them all if they continue thus!”

  The wave of French chivalry met the sweep of deadly English arrows; thudding bolts riveted shield to chest and fixed armor to thigh. Still, onward like a relentless sea they came, each breaker cresting over the fallen horses and fellow humans, trampling them in the slippery mud and mire.

  Disdainfully ignoring the brave, common English yeomen and foot soldiers, the French took on only armored knights whether they were mounted or afoot. Again, yet again, the
continually burgeoning French ranks encroached upon the prince’s battalion’s position only to be repulsed and shoved back. When the first French battalion had toppled into mud and writhing death below, the second massive attack surged forward and upward.

  From his vantage point among the picked fighters—the earl of Oxford, Sir Reynold Cobham, Thomas Holland, and the fierce, indomitable John Chandos—the prince watched them come. He could read the designs on the battle flag and crested shields in this assault well enough now—the combined troops of the powerful Counts of Blois and Lorraine with a few distinctive knights surrounding the famous black armored King of Bohemia. Everywhere above the French ranks fluttered the blood-red flag, the oriflamme, about which he had once teased the willful Jeannette—no quarter asked and none given.

  Prince Edward snapped his visor down and braced himself as the French knights surged at his position. He knew he was a prize they all desired second only to his royal sire. His blood pounded in his ears as if to ward off the battle din. He screamed aloud a challenge to heaven and St. George; his brain encased in the iron skull of his helmet echoed with it. He raised his huge sword at the first armored knight he saw and the battle he had waited for all his life was upon him.

  Blows rained against his armor and shield as his opponent swung, parried, and hacked at him. He read the crested armor instantly—Duke of Lorraine, brother-in-law of the French king Philip. Perhaps the French wanted the English prince’s death rather than his capture; they could read his gold and crimson leopards, and fleurs-de-lis well enough.

  The prince dripped with sweat in his iron cocoon of black metal over heavy padding. He shifted weight, hit, charged. Lorraine went down, burdened by the sixty pounds of elaborately scripted armor, and a second man took his place immediately. Edward whirled and shoved, amazed as the next Frenchman fell at his feet, his back pierced by an English arrow from the darkening sky.

  Another fighter screaming for “Mountjoye St. Denis!” took the place of the vanquished men—and yet another. A wild tip of a sword caught the side of the prince’s neck where his helmet was beaten awry. He felt the searing fire of the cut where his neck joined his shoulder, then the hot stickiness of spreading blood. St. George, it was only his left side and not his sword arm, so he plunged on. Again a new, silver-plated man. As he fought, his strength slowly crumbled to exhaustion and then to the cold, mechanical, clanging performance of a spinning quintain dummy. Time turned, slowed, and stood still.

  The enemy evaporated, beaten back, and two of his own knights were upon him to check his wound. “Your arm, Your Grace—much blood. Can you not use it?” Someone lifted his suffocating helmet off, and he drank great gulps of sultry, death-laden air. He was astounded to see it was nearly as dark outside as it had been in the helmet. His men were unbuckling his breastplate and divesting him of his ebony armor.

  “Just blood—not bad. Back—we have beaten them back. How long?”

  “How long was that charge, my lord prince? You have been taking them on for over two hours now—here, my lord, lie back and Oxford will fetch the royal surgeon.”

  “I saw the king of Bohemia go by just over there in one little respite. I killed Lorraine. By the rood, I would have liked to have him my prisoner!”

  “Aye, Your Grace. We noted the king of Bohemia well in his all-black armor with his sable horse. Blind as he is, he had tied his bridle to four others and just charged in wanting to get a fix on you or the king.”

  “On me,” Edward breathed and winced as his pauldron nipped into his wounded neck and shoulder when he sat in the mud on the ground. “John of Bohemia, the most chivalrous of all European kings excepting my father,” he said softly and to no one in particular. “How I wanted to meet him—to take that king for ransom—to talk to him. I must get up—he was close about. I shall seek him yet.”

  He shoved Oxford’s restraining hands away and had risen to his knees to stand when the king with a cheering retinue of armor-clanking knights appeared from the gloom. The father knelt by the son, his eyes wide, his face serious.

  “My dear prince—they told me in the heat of the fray you needed my battalion for reinforcements and here I find you hale and resting on your bloody swords! St. George and England be praised, the day is ours and fairly won!”

  He had clapped his heir on the shoulder before he realized the torn silk surcote bearing the Plantagenet arms was darkened by blood as well as mud. They rose close together, helping each other to stand.

  “A wound—a badge of courage, my son. A surgeon! A surgeon to me at once!” King Edward shouted.

  “A scratch—only a deep scratch. How many lost, my lord father?”

  “Of the French, thousands. Their prideful, unbending charge drove them into the dragon’s mouth of our arrows unceasingly. French Philip has yet to learn that wiles and not tournament chivalry will win the day. But you, my son, my mud-bespattered black prince—you have acquitted yourself well this day.”

  As soon as the surgeon appeared, the king went off with the joyous Godfrey de Harcourt and others to rally the men and warn them not to loot or slay the fallen French. A count would be taken at first dawn and many held for ransom to swell the dwindled English coffers. Yet out on the dark field of destruction, occasional cries and screams or clanging armor bespoke sporadic action where some of the enemy had not yet died or fled.

  After they had removed his ruined surcote and the rest of his new sable armor, now baptized with the brazen blood of battle, the royal surgeon washed his bloodied cut with plantain water and doused it with winterbloom to seal the wound. The prince gulped the bitter ash leaf tea to ward off fever and downed a cool flask of Bordeaux wine the Earl of Warwick offered. The sure-handed surgeon wound a snowy bandage around his shoulder and ribs and immobilized his upper left arm to prevent the gash from being opened. Then, the surgeon and his assistants moved on to seek other noble English wounded about the area.

  The prince stood somewhat unsteadily, whether from blood loss or physical exhaustion he knew not and cared less. All the wounded or dead Frenchmen out there—hostile, flaunting the oriflamme, stealing the duchies that were by right Plantagenet lands, aching to spill English blood—they were the enemy. But old, blind John, King of Bohemia, he was here today for some sort of honor in battle, for love of a fight. The prince not only forgave but honored that motive wholeheartedly.

  He lifted a resin torch the surgeon’s traveling band had left near him and moved down off the hill. If the king of Bohemia were injured or just trapped out here like so many, or mayhap wandering around in his blindness, he would find him. His black armor and black heraldric devices, his sable-hued destrier all meant he would be easily discernible among the other glinting silver-armored ones. He could not have gone too far riding that way; they had said he had charged by tied to four others.

  His torch held high, the prince walked unsteadily down off the littered hill. He threaded his way slowly around mounds of horses crushing their shiny-plated masters underneath their huge forms. The reflection of his torchlight grinned at him from the muted mirrors of fallen helmets and breastplates. Somewhere out there in the distant darkness, a wavering voice called in French for a woman named Claudette.

  Women. Jeannette and his mother and sisters—so distant in all this fierce confusion. But women were worth a different sort of war. Now, now that he had proved himself and really earned his spurs, Jeannette could be his—to conquer without quarter!

  His torchlight seized upon something different then, beyond a pile of tangled bodies—black plumes aloft, moving gently in the slight evening breeze. He went closer and halted. Stone still, before him like a carved tableau, the black-armored John of Bohemia lay dead in the center of the circle of his comrades to whom his black horse’s reins were still tied. One ebony-encased leg still thrown over the destrier as if he meant to remount, the body lay stretched out with sword in gauntleted hand. From his closed helmet fluttered the three distinctive ostrich plumes for which the heroic knight had been
long known. From his dark shield the crest and German motto leapt up in the wavering torchlight: Ich Dien!

  “I serve,” the prince whispered. Awe suddenly overwhelmed his wearied heart, and he knelt stiffly to pray. All the things this dead black knight embodied, he himself wished to be—great knight, renowned hero, fierce fighter, Christian rescuer, beloved king. Today, out of all the hundreds and thousands on the field of battle only John, king of Bohemia, and Edward, prince of Wales, had worn black armor, and now they met like this—too late.

  His hand stretched out to touch the soft, fluttering ostrich feathers. Gently, he removed the black, engraved helmet and gazed into the wide-eyed, silent face. Holding the helmet to him, he reached out with his left arm, despite the shooting pain it caused, and closed the staring, blind eyes.

  He sat back on his heels and looked upward at the black velvet sky where a sprinkle of stars shot out straight above between the sweeping clouds. He could hear his men now in the distance—Salisbury’s voice—calling for him.

  If he had met and talked with this warrior king and told him of his plans, his hopes, would they not have shared much? As a boy he had heard reports of his exploits—another Charlemagne or Arthur on a small, real-life scale.

  The motto and the three tall ostrich plumes—he would adopt them for his own in honor of this fallen man. Ich Dien—“I serve” for him and for all Princes of Wales hereafter. Indeed, for his own son someday if he could only tame his wild Jeannette as he had these proud French.

  Cradling the helmet and the shield with the motto, he stood and began to wend his way slowly toward his calling men. Behind him the low-burning resin torch at the head of the dead king was like a single beacon on the great black battlefield of Crécy.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was the first foreign excursion Joan of Kent had ever made—a marvelous series of adventures with the greatest at journey’s end. The prince awaited the royal travelers and their retinue at Bruges in Flanders. The trip was not only a domestic occasion for Queen Philippa to be reunited with her husband and son, now the celebrated victors of the glorious Battle of Crécy, but also a political occasion. To further bind England to her Flemish allies against the French, the Princess Isabella was to be joined in blessed, and necessary, matrimony to Louis de Male, the new Count of Flanders, through his father’s death fighting for the French on the bloodied battlefield of Crécy.