‘Aye,’ replied Yevan. ‘We sit here on our backsides while them’s out there robbing the dead, and killing the wounded! May as well take ourselves off. Ye heard what Sir John said.’ He shouldered his staff and picked up his quiver. ‘Lewis! You wait here with James and Eric. We’ll send for you when we’ve found a possie.’ He shambled off, and called over his shoulder:
‘Come on lads!’
Groaning and muttering, they followed.
The sun was dipping, but the skies had cleared, and a soft light fell across the battlefield. Around him, James could hear the prisoners talking in their strange and sing-song language. One or two were sobbing – squires or page boys he guessed – and a few cursed and cried out from wounds that smarted as they moved. There was a young knight, standing to one side, covered in filth, but upright, and staring. He wore the muddy remnants of a blue jupon with a yellow chevron: it was a blazon he did not recognize.
William Bretoun came across. He was whistling, and he had a golden chain slung about his neck.
'Hey, up lads! Others gone? No matter, there’s plenty here to look after ye.’ He said down with a sigh. ‘That was a bonny fight, then. Close enough though. Did you hear? My lord Suffolk fell: the father falls at Harfleur, and now the son at Agincourt. I saw his shield all smashed up and him beneath it. A bad day for the leopard-heads, and the widows of La Pole.’
Eric tried to sit up, and winced.
‘Whoa!’ said William. ‘Take your ease! You’ve done enough for one day.’ He looked about him. ‘King’s over there, still talking. My lords Bedford and Exeter too, and Warwick. You know York got killed, don’t you? Aye, the king’s own brother. Trampled to death they say. Poor blighter! Drowned in the mud!’
Lewis grunted: ‘King’s princes and peasant boys! Mud doesn’t care. Swallows ‘em all. What say you, James?’
‘I’d say I’m happy to be alive.’ He paused. ‘What do you think they’ll call this battle?’
William laughed and spat. ‘They’ll call it bloody an’ lucky, boyo!’
‘Nay, ye bell-noggin!’ broke in Lewis, ‘The lad means . . .’
‘Aye, I know what he means. Well, I’m guessing it’ll be called Tramecourt, or Maisoncelles, or perhaps Azincourt after that castle over there. Makes no odds, anyway, - the king’ll call it whatever he likes.’
There was a stir as the provost-marshal came up with a clerk, a priest and three men at arms. They had come to book the prisoners.
‘Ask ‘im !’ said Yevan gesturing towards the provost. ‘He’ll know the king’s mind on the matter.’ He got to his feet, and stood waiting until the provost caught sight of him, and waved him across. ‘I’m away, lads!’ he said and walked across to the provost.
James took the rag end of a French banner and draped it across Eric’s shoulder: the man-at-arms was shivering despite the late sun, and he was still deathly pale. Eric nodded his thanks, and clenched his teeth to stop them chattering.
'They’ll be back soon,’ said James. ‘Then we’ll get ye to where it’s warm and dry.’
‘Aye, and none too soon’,’ grumbled Lewis. ‘It’s a fine thing to win a battle, but it’s a sorry thing to celebrate by sitting on your backside in freezing mud.’
Slowly, James stood up. His shoulders were stiff, and his belly hurt, but apart from that . . .
‘I’ll remember this battle,’ he said.
‘Good for ye,’ replied Lewis.
James shook his head. ‘No, I’ll remember it. I’ll remember it when I’m twice as old an’ grey as ye be now, and I’ve got grandchildren scampering around my feet. I’ll tell them.’
Old Lewis gave a short laugh and looked up at the bowman from Chiswick. ‘And what will ye tell ‘em?’
‘I’ll tell ‘em we won a great battle against the French in a muddy field in a far country far across the sea, and that we took gold and prisoners by the score.’
‘And ye’ll no remember your friends?’
'Hah! No need! You’ll all be there in Chiswick, lounging around, old and fat and sucking on chicken bones. And you’ll tell me what I ought to say and what I ought not. You too Eric! You’ll be there!.’
Eric smiled. ‘Chiswick!’ he said. ‘What sort of scrape-hole is that?’
‘My scrape-hole!’ laughed James, ‘And you’d be doing well to find a better one. When I get you out of this, I’ll take you back home to my Hettie’s until you’re in good enough shape to return to your own folks.’
Eric said nothing. He just stared. Finally he spoke, though he still shivered and beads of sweat stood out on his brow:
‘You’d really do that?’
‘Aye, I would. And I will. You took a blow for me. I owe you.’
Slowly the man-at-arms shook his head. ‘You’re mad. There’s no way, and you’re mad!’
Old Lewis frowned. ‘He’s right James. When you’re wounded in this army, you walk home on your own, or you don’t go home at all. Unless you’re a knight or a noble, that is. We all know that. Talk sense, man!’
While he was talking, Yevan, Morgaun, Jankyn and the others came back. They were dragging a handcart and laughing.
James went to meet them. ‘Where’d ye get that?’
'Borrowed it!’ said Yevan with a grin. ‘A passing priest on the way to his glebe said we could borrow it, if we returned it safe and sound in the morning.’
‘Did ‘e now?’
‘Aye, ‘e did. And a fine, fat fellow ‘e was too, though ‘e spoke more of his furriner tongue than ‘e did of the king’s English.’
James looked at the handcart, already caked with mud, and leaning drunkenly to one side. ‘For Eric?’
'Well, it’s not for the crown jewels boyo,’ said Yevan, and it’s sure as not for thee.’ He swept the cart clear of dirt with the side of his hand, tossed in his quiver and bow, then looked down at Eric:
'Up now ye laggard Englishman ! There’s a chariot to take ye home!’
Eric grinned: ‘Another reason to hate the Welsh!’ he said, and leaning on James struggled painfully to his feet.
Homeward
In the morning they buried the dead. They dug great pits near Maisoncelles, filled them with lime and threw the bodies in. The king allowed the bodies of noble-born to be taken from the field, but all others, English and French, went into the pits. That is, save the body of Davy Gamm, who was knighted by the king as he lay dying on the battlefield.
It was said that the French dead numbered some ten thousand, and the English dead just two hundred, but it did not seem that way to James. Perhaps it was where he laboured in the centre of the field, but he seemed to be burying an Englishman for every three French. At times the bodies were so hacked and bloodied he could not tell, and as the stink rose and his arms tired, he neither cared nor noticed.
An hour past noon the job was done, and he sat under an oak at the field’s edge and ate a ploughman’s meal. Eric was there, and looking better for a night by a warm fire, and a quart of friar’s wine: part he drank, and part he poured on his broken shoulder. Old Lewis sniffed the wound, pronounced the break a clean one, and said that Eric should make it back to England.
They took the road to Calais with the sun on their backs, and a westerly breeze on their left quarter. The French army had been broken, but by no means destroyed, and King Henry was anxious to make the safety of the port before that army regrouped. The Constable of France had died of his wounds, and along with him near half the nobility of the French Duchies, but scattered French forces could always pose a threat. Ambush was a constant fear.
Nonetheless, they marched in good spirits – some even sang – and though the rutted road was difficult, it was by no means impassable. For a time Eric endured the handcart, and the good-humoured efforts of his friends, but in the end he took to walking, and hobbled along next to James, who had strapped his armour and kitbag to his own back.
The weather held, three days rolled by, and they came to Calais, with less wounded than they had set out with, bu
t with more than they had hoped to keep. Fresh water and fresh food had driven back the dysentery and fever. Even Morgaun Filkyn had shaken off the sweats, and strode alongside Yevan and Old Lewis, talking at the top of his voice.
‘They’ll ring the bells for us in England, mark you!’ he said, ‘And the girls will wave us through the streets of every town.’
Yevan laughed. ‘Like as much they’ll run at the sight of us,’ he replied. ‘We come stinking from the fields of France, as ragged as any beggar band ye’ll see.’
'I care not either way,’ grunted Old Lewis. ‘As long as Harry pays me my due, and gives me square of the ransom, I’ll come home happy.’
'Aye,’ said Morgaun, as he stared down the road at the towers and spires of Calais Port, ‘If the provost marshal hasn’t played me false, I should get a tidy sum. I’ve a share in the Count of Richemont, and if we hadn’t killed the Duke of Brabant by mistake . . .’
‘So it was you, boyo!’ broke in Yevan. ‘What sort of trick was that to cut the throat of a duke, when you could have had a feast of ransom?’
Morgaun cursed, and slowed his stride. ‘He was dressed in the tabard of a squire, damn his eyes! No one knew him. It was over so quick.’
‘Ah well. What’s done is done. For my part, I only grabbed a couple of half-dead knights, but I hear William Bretoun got him a royal duke, Orleans it was!’
‘The devil ‘e did! Who told you that?’
‘William Glyn from Tudur’s company. He saw Bretoun put a clout-head fair smack into his breastplate. Near knocked the stuffing out of ‘im. Glyn got there first with his poignard, but it was Bretoun’s arrow what nailed the duke, so ‘e gets the lion’s share.’
‘After the king and old Erpingham have had a bite of it,’ replied Morgaun who was tiring of the conversation, and eager to get to the port and find a tavern.
'Aye, that’s as maybe, but ‘e’ll go home with enough to raise a company and come back to France for more.’
James who was sweating beneath his load, and like Morgaun eager to quench his thirst, shook his head: ‘No more of this for me’, he said.
But Yevan only half heard him. He was gazing at the gates to the town, and the barbican towers that defended them.
'Nearly there,’ he said. ‘If Harry doesn’t make us camp outside the town, we’ll be in the streets within the hour.’ He paused. ‘Can ye hear the bells? They’re ringing us in!’ he threw back his head and laughed. ‘Hah! It’s free for us in there, lads! Whatever we like!’
'All I want,’ replied James, ‘is a hot meal, a warm bed of straw, and news of a boat on the morrow.’
'England?’
'Aye, England. What say you, Eric?’
'I say anywhere a man can lie down, and ease his bones is good enough for me.’ He was leaning heavily on his staff, and blood was showing through the bandaging across his shoulder.
'Well, we’ll have ye there in a short while’, said Old Lewis. ‘See! Here’s a hay cart on it’s way to no where in particular. Let’s be putting young Eric on it!’
They waved the ox-cart down. It was driven by a young boy and his father, who looked a little uncertain when they understood what the archers wanted, but finally the father shrugged, muttered something in French , and helped Eric up onto the cart.
And so they came to Calais, and made the streets their own, though they camped outside the town at command of the king, and took shelter as best they could beneath the walls, and in the fields and hedgerows that ran down to the great sea.
Three days later, they took ship for England. The king had paid the indentured archers and men-at-arms as best he could, but many were forced to sell their plunder cheaply just to get food. Prisoners were also ransomed cheaply. Bread, salted pork and Gascon wine became scarce throughout the town, and prices soared. The sutlers prospered.
James, and the other archers of his company found a little Cog in the harbour that was bound for Winchelsea. It was the Andrew of Rye, and though its master had come to trade barrels of Rhenish for fine Sussex wool, he was willing to make space for longbowmen with wallets full of the king’s silver.
‘Come up, my lads!’ he said, leaning over the rail, and beaming down on them where they stood on the stone quayside. ‘We’ve room enough for thee, and all ye carry. Are ye from the great battle?’
‘We are!’ replied Jankyn, ‘And we’re ready for home!’
The master laughed. ‘That I’ll warrant! We sail on the noon tide. There’s a dry nor’easter at our backs and an easy swell ahead o’ us. Should be a good crossing.’ He waved them on, then turned to shout at a sailor who was rolling a wine barrel up the gangplank. Moments later they were all aboard.
They reached Winchelsea the following morning, coming in on the tide, and sliding through the mist that all but hid the stone watch towers at the entrance to the harbour.
‘England!’ said James.
‘Where?’ replied Yevan. ‘Can’t see a blamed thing, boyo. It may as well be Flanders.’
James arrived at Chiswick a week later. He came alone up the muddy road from Shene, and stopped when he saw the long, low slope that flanked the broad Tamesis River. He was home:
The same line of oaks crowding along the water’s edge. The same rich, green sweep of the meadow land that ringed the little village. The church, the mill, and the old knight’s hall: they were all there still, and clustered around them along the narrow street the crucks and cottages of the Chiswick folk.
He turned and looked back the way he had come. There was no one. In his Company, the Welsh had gone back to their valleys, the Devon men to Devon, and the Cheshire bowmen to the North. Not even Eric had come to Chiswick. He was a Penshurst man, and Mat Bromfield the tanner, who came from near that same village, had agreed to see him safely home.
James breathed in the early morning air. Home! And nobody about. Chiswick abed! He laughed to himself, and headed for the village.
By Christmastide, when the steady frosts of Winter hung heavy on the orchards and fields of Chiswick, James had done the ploughing, repaired the cruck, and built a lean-to barn against the sheepfold. Hettie was with child, her mother had moved in, and the midwife said there would be an extra mouth to feed by the Summer harvest.
One day, as the sun dipped and the cold drew in, James went down to the marker stone that separated his land from that of his lord, the Dean of St. Paul’s. The land James held was good land, fresh, deep, and dark from the ploughing. Good for barley, easy to work, and full fat in the hands of a yeoman farmer.
Still, he needed more and the land of his lord the Dean looked ripe for the taking. He stared at it. It was no more than five hides, but it was rich and green and well set. It ran along the river by Chiswick Eyot, and bordered Sutton manor where the king himself held a hall. Five hides! All he would need, and sitting there with naught to do but graze the few sheep of the village priest.
He rubbed the stubble on his chin, and scanned the meadow once more. What price? The bailiff had said he would need a good few crowns just to get the grazing rights, and at least another twenty pounds of easterlings to turn it over to tillage. He had heard that from the Dean’s own scrivener who kept the books for the chapter of St Paul’s and knew the asking rates.
Well, that was that then. He could rent at a king’s ransom, but never buy, and there would be no special deals for a soldier home from the wars. In fact the village rumours that there were yeomen aplenty about with Agincourt silver in their crocks had doubtless forced the prices up, and the Church was ever ready to sniff a bargain.
He smiled and stepped past the marker. Good land all right. Firm beneath his feet and sheltered by a stand of elms hard by old Tamesis.
But too rich for him. He had brought back so little from France. The old knight had paid a ransom that worth no more than a milch cow, and the young lord he had captured at the end of the battle was also claimed by the Duke of Westmoreland, so there was less than a few shillings for the likes of a bowman from Chiswick.
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br /> Still, he had sold the knight’s armour at Calais, and picked up three crowns from a Flemish merchant for a jewel-inlaid dagger he had found on the battlefield. But that was all, apart from the wages of his indenture. And some he had spent on food, and some on his passage home, and some on some fine French ribbons for Hettie to tie back her hair.
As for buying land . . . he looked again at the five hides. Land! One clean shot with a clout-headed arrow smack into the breastplate of a French noble, and he could have all the land he had ever dreamt of. William Bretoun had done it. One clean shot! That’s all, and the world turns upside down. With the ransom of a royal duke in his pocket he would be more than a poor yeoman farmer in Chiswick. He would have those five hides, and more besides if good French gold spoke as loudly as men said it did.
He turned and began to walk back up the lea slope towards the cruck-house. A light was burning in the doorway, and he could hear Hettie singing over the cooking pot. The smell of hare and bacon pottage came to him, and he quickened his stride. Still, he could not forget the five hides of lea land.
Yesterday he had met Mark the Carter near the crossroads for Kew. Mark never never said much, usually just a wave of the hand, but this time he had news: there was talk in Turnham Green that Thomas, Earl of Dorset was raising a company of soldiers to go to France in the New Year. They were leaving from Southampton for Harfleur sometime in January.
Short term indentures were being issued for nine hundred men at arms and fifteen hundred archers: men-at-arms 1 shilling 6d ; archers 6 pennies a day.
He pushed the heavy curtain aside and stooped to enter the cruck.. Hettie looked up and smiled. He smiled back:
‘I’m for France,’ he said.
Harfleur January 1416
The port heaved and bustled with life. Everywhere people hurried to and fro, pushing past each other with kits and knapsacks, handcarts and barrows. In the harbour, high masted cogs crowded against the quay, and workmen struggled to clear the piles of supplies and munitions which lay outside the warehouses. Scaffolding covered the shattered walls of the town, and stonemasons called out to labourers and journeymen as they swarmed up and down the ladders with mortar and fresh dressed stone. Great winches and pulleys raised the heavier blocks, while burghers cloaked in furs, stood about anxiously eyeing the walls and muttering about the lack of progress.
The Bow Page 5