Falstaff

by Robert Nye

  That night he came creeping down once more from his cave and put his long hollow cane to her ear and told her in no uncertain terms that God was fed up with the delays and wanted action.

  At dawn, therefore, the widow and her daughter presented themselves to the hermit. The mother, her heart singing with joy, had no sooner told that whited sepulchre about her third and latest message, than he took her gently by the hand and led her into his chapel.

  “Madam,” he said, “you must leave your beautiful daughter here.”

  “In a chapel?”

  “Your daughter and I will begin praying,” explained the hermit. “Then God will tell us what to do.”

  “And you will do it?”

  “Of course.”

  The widow went away.

  When the hermit found himself alone with the girl, he made her strip naked, as if he wished to baptise her for a second time.

  However, he did not baptise her.

  In due course, the news spread that the daughter of the widow woman was pregnant by the holy hermit of Walsingham, and that it had been revealed to them by the angel Malvolio that their son was to be Pope.

  So – when the poor girl gave birth to a fine, bonny, bouncing – DAUGHTER! – then the sparks really flew!

  The widow woman died of shock and grief.

  The hermit ran away.

  The girl made the best of her situation, living quietly, and bringing up her child. Because she was beautiful, and gentle, and good, and did not lose her faith on account of one man’s wicked deceit, she found in time a husband to help her in the world.

  And her child prospered and grew up even more beautiful than the girl had been in the days when the hermit had her.

  ‘I know this for a fact,’ concluded Pistol, with a flourish of his cloak. ‘Since she was my mother!’

  We were all suitably impressed and astonished.

  Well, I was not so astonished.

  The news that my ensign was the son of a bastard Pope of the wrong sex did a lot to explain his bombastic and thrasonical manner of speaking. Which manner, incidentally, I have not attempted to emulate in recounting the substance of his story, simply because it always bored and irritated me. He could not say anything as simple as ‘the sparks really flew’, for example, which I have employed above, haven’t I, Worcester? What Pistol actually said, as I recall it, was ‘the world was fracted and corroborate.’ No one would want to hear too much of that kind of stuff.

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  About the siege of Harfleur

  Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

  Our King went forth to Normandy, as it says in the Agincourt song, as we sing in the Agincourt song, us veterans of Agincourt, followers and companions of that King, Henry, by the grace of God King of England and France, the Fifth. And the day we went forth was the 11th day of August, 1415 of God’s Death, which day was a Sunday.

  Swans.

  White swans all around us on the silver sea as we fared forth for France.

  We left three heads on spikes behind us in Southampton. Cambridge, Scrope, and Grey. (This Scrope my stepson Stephen’s cousin.) They had plotted to kill the King. Henry saw their heads chopped off before going on board his ship, the Trinity.

  6000 men-at-arms, knights, knights bachelor and esquires.

  24,000 archers, yeomen, cross-bowmen, pikemen, spearmen.

  25,000 horses.

  1500 vessels.

  O swords. O swans. O trumpets.

  We sailed like a moving city. And in that city, within that great and glorious fleet, it was easy enough for one loyal subject of King Henry V to observe the strict condition of his banishment, and keep himself ten miles from the same Majesty’s person.

  I joke, Worcester. (That was an excellent pestle pie. You may even mention my approval to that bugger Macbeth. He must be drunker than usual, or improving.) I joke. That ten-mile-limit was a thing of form.

  I stood for something which Harry the Prig had to reject.

  Would he have been a greater King if he had not rejected it?

  I don’t know.

  I do think he might have been a better man if he had not felt the need to reject it.

  But, then, I am biased – hey now, was ever a man so biased and with such a belly of obliquity before? And, besides, it gives me the toothache talking about this man or that being ‘better’. You have to take your fellows as they come. And, for a final besides, I was soon to find that shrewd King Henry V had stipulated ten ENGLISH miles! Id est, he had no intention of disallowing himself my military services at closer range on foreign soil. I was expected to be the thick of things as usual.

  It was hot. Those ships stank. We’d waited eighteen days for a wind to France. There was a shortage of sack. My shirt made me itch.

  Porpoise playing beside us in the pride of the tide.

  Light on the water like diamonds scattered. Or a blade, cutting drowned fire.

  We cast anchor next day, at noon, at a place called Chef de Caux, about three miles from Harfleur. There we sat. There we rode. There we creaked. There we waited. All afternoon, all evening, and all night.

  Next morning, before daybreak, Sir John Holland, Earl of Huntingdon, was sent with a small company to reconnoitre. Then, when morning dawned and the sun shone clear, the King moved in with the main part of the army, effecting our landing in little boats and skiffs, taking up position on a hill overlooking Harfleur. I remember three things. There was a wild wood running down to the estuary of the Seine, on our right hand. There were green fields, with farms and orchards, on our left. And coming up out of my landing craft I trod straight in a cow turd, which made Bardolph laugh until his nose turned normal. I kicked him to wipe my foot.

  Standing on that hill, the larks ascending, I sniffed success as I looked down upon Harfleur. I sheathed my sword in buttercups and drank burnt brandy. I reflected, not for the first time, but more keenly than ever before, how fine a thing it is to be alive and to be a man of parts.

  As for the cow-shit, I counted that lucky. Caesar stepped in some before Pharsalus.

  Henry sent a herald to demand the surrender of the town.

  This was consonant with his position. He presented himself to Harfleur as a sovereign demanding no more than his rightful inheritance. He was the lawful Duke of Normandy. Harfleur owed him obedience. He promised death to Harfleur if Harfleur refused him what it owed.

  Harfleur did refuse.

  The defences of the town were strong. Its garrison consisted of four hundred men-at-arms, who with their attendants must have made up a force of about three thousand. Further, Harfleur had ditches round it, and walls with high towers, plus three gates, before the biggest of which the Frogs had erected a defence called a barbican, with great trees bound strongly together, leaving only a number of chinks and crevices through which they could shoot at us.

  Nasty. Like a fortified pie. Bristling with knives. And surrounded by gravy.

  Henry began with orthodox siege tactics. He set up his heavy field-pieces, with shields of wood and iron to protect the artillerymen. Then a cannonade began, with us shooting stones from the guns, using ignited powder. This went on for seven days and nights. Our gunners directed most of their attack against the barbican, battering it with the stones, and three times managing to get the wood on fire. But the enemy did us as much damage as they could, with their guns and crossbows, and as the walls and towers were broken by day, they heaped up in the breach by night logs and tubs filled with earth, and great piles of sand and stones. They also built up mounds of thick clay – a clever trick, for these took the stones from our cannons. It was like shooting plums into a pudding. Very frustrating.

  Henry sent the miners in. They dug long trenches to undermine the walls.

  But the Frogs dug counter-mines, and baffled us.

  Then the King sent a party in close, to fill up the ditches with faggots, with a view to taking the town by storm. But the French met us with a fusillade of stones and arrows, p
ouring vats of quick-lime and burning oil on those who got through, and finally scotching that stratagem by dropping burning torches into the faggots, so that they burnt harmlessly all round the foot of the walls.

  I stood between our siege guns, observing operations.

  The King’s Daughter, we called the major engine. The others, her Maidens.

  Ah, war! Kiss my arse!

  I smell it. The stench of the tunnels, which kept flooding, and the corpses floating there.

  I hear it. The mighty whang-whang-whang of the siege guns. The whistle and hiss of arrows. Peto lost an eye. But he was lucky. The King had made regular provision for the medical and surgical treatment of our wounded. Mr Nicholas Colnet, physician, and Mr Thomas Morstede, surgeon, together with twelve assistants, manned our ambulance service. Peto owed his life to Morstede’s skill.

  I touch it. The casings of steel on your arms and legs and chest. The prickly shaven sides of your skull, where the hair was cut to the roots, so that your head should keep cool and comfortable inside your helmet. Here is the helmet I wore at Harfleur and Agincourt. A salade. Covers all the vital parts of the neck. A little old-fashioned now, of course, but a vast improvement on the old heaumes I can tell you.

  I see it. The flags opposing. The glint of the sun on the King’s Daughter and her Maidens. The barbican burning. Those obstinate towers.

  Harfleur proved obstinate all right.

  As fast as we made holes in their defences, the French filled them up.

  Then it began to rain. It rained and rained. It would not stop. It got inside your armour and your boots. It turned the ditches into moats. It made our banners look like wrung-out rags. It made the horses cough, and stand all the time on three legs, hindquarters turned into the wind, eyes shut, like creatures in a dream. And, worst of all, I think it was this sudden access of unseasonable wet weather which caused the vile epidemic of dysentery which swept through our ranks. Conditions around Harfleur made the place a breeding ground for such disease, I daresay. The countryside was one long swamp now, with the breath of decayed and decaying flesh on every breeze. Rotting corpses. The offal of slaughtered animals. And when at last the rain stopped, and steam rose from the broken ground, the flies came, and the very summer sunlight seemed infected with the flux.

  Two thousand of our men fell victim to the dysentery, and died. Prince Thomas, Duke of Clarence, went down with it. He did not die. But he had to be carried to a ship and back to England.

  For the first time, I suspect, with the departure of his brother Thomas, it crossed Henry’s mind that Harfleur was maybe not his for the simple plucking. That was enough to make that eagle eye flash bright, unconquerable. He proclaimed by trumpet through the camp that the whole army should prepare to storm the city at dawn. It was to be an all or nothing attempt. We had, he said, to ‘imitate the action of the tiger’. I was never a great tiger man myself. Lions and elephants are more my style. (Though I know that Bacchus liked to travel in a chariot drawn by tigers.) However, what is interesting here, in any case, is not the animal chosen by the King as symbol, but the fact that he was still talking of acting and imitation at a time like this. I think for Hal the whole world was a stage, and all the men and women merely players. He was himself now playing the part of King to the utmost.

  All night the King’s Daughter and her escort of Maidens kept up that fusillade. Whang-whang-whang. Pistol strutted in his scarlet cloak, careless of danger under a full moon, shouting of Sir Acolon, Sir Ballamore, Sir Beaumaris, Sir Bors, Sir Ector, Sir Eric, Sir Ewain, Sir Gaheris, Sir Galahad, Sir Gareth, Sir Gawain, Sir Kay, Sir Lamerock, Sir Lancelot of the Lake, Sir Lionell, Sir Marhaus, Sir Palamide, Sir Pelleas, Sir Peredur, Sir Sagris, Sir Superabilis, Sir Tor, Sir Tristam, Sir Wigamur, and all the other Knights of the Round Table, comparing them on the whole unfavourably with his own performance as planned for the next day. Nym and Peto diced. Bardolph kneaded his nose. I sat on some dead French (the ground being damp), and drank sherris sack. A good sherris sack has a two-fold operation in it. It ascends into the brain, making that organ quick and apprehensive, full of fiery shapes. The second property of your excellent sherris is the warming of the blood. Under the moon, that night, my cups of still white wine from Xeres lit up my face, until that face was like a beacon giving warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm. And then the vital commoners, the inland petty spirits, mustered my whole being to their captain, my heart. Which heart, great and puffed up with his retinue, was ready to do any deed of courage in the morning. O it was like drinking white fire, moonlight, Samson’s honey blood. And all this valour came of sherris. If I had a thousand sons, Worcester, the first humane principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack.

  Morning came. We prepared to charge.

  But something –

  Harry Monmouth doing his best to imitate a tiger?

  Pistol astride the King’s Daughter discharging?

  Myself, red roaring drunk on the green hill?

  – SOMETHING, at any rate, made the inhabitants of Harfleur suddenly aware of the hopelessness of their position.

  A man with a white flag slid down the barbican.

  It was an envoy from the commander of the garrison. He came with a promise to capitulate, surrender, and give up the town completely to us, unless Harfleur should be relieved by the French King or the Dolphin before the first hour after noon of the Sunday following. That was, within three days.

  Harry agreed to the terms.

  It was now (I think) the 19th of September, and the siege had lasted exactly thirty days.

  And, of course, neither mad King Charles nor his equally empty son showed up before the Sunday.

  And in the afternoon of that day, our King Harry, clad in gold armour, seated on his throne in a pavilion on the hill, with Sir Gilbert Umfraville on his right, bearing on a spear the crowned helmet of the King, received the Lord of Garcourt, accompanied by all the other chief inhabitants of Harfleur, making a formal surrender of the keys of the city.

  ‘God for Harry, England, and St George!’

  The King kept the captain of the garrison, and his council men, all garbed in the grey shirt of penitence, with ropes round their necks ready for hanging – kept them kneeling in the evening air, a touch of autumn in it, on their bended bones …

  Then, with a nod, he spared their lives.

  And when the moon came up that night she saw the banners of St George and the King of England on the gates of Harfleur town.

  And Harry Monmouth, barefoot, walking through the streets to the church of St Martin, where he offered up a thanksgiving for his success.

  And me, Fastolf, barefoot also, upon the barbican, astride the three sweet daughters of the Lord of Gaucourt – a different form of thanksgiving, but no less sincere. I had the satisfaction of hearing those three virgins cry out with pleasure one after another and thank the English milord for his puissance in their siege. Merci! – or was it Mercy!? Their hymens vent, we devised several new geometries as the night wore on – theorems not in Pythagoras – in discovering ways for those three girls to have their breaches simultaneously filled. – (Madam! Well, since you ask: my cock, my tongue, and my big toe …) – Their English was no better than my French, but I have found that problems of communication can always be solved by your prick erect. There is nothing like it, whether for explanation, explication, or interpretation of meaning.

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  About Bardolph’s execution

  Holy Cross Day

  Henry sent a challenge to the Dolphin, offering to submit his claim to the throne of France to the issue of a single combat. No answer. Not even one tennis-ball. The King then decided on a march to Calais, leaving five hundred men-at-arms and one thousand archers to garrison Harfleur, and taking nine hundred men-at-arms and five thousand archers with him on the march. Our prisoners, our booty, our wounded, and those still incapacitated by the quickshits, we sent back to Engl
and. Also the engines of war. The last had served their purpose, and the King had other military ambitions now. We fought our way through Picardy, crossing the River Somme near Nesle, where there was a ford where the water was little higher than to a horse’s belly. The French troops now fell back quite deliberately in front of us, massing to post themselves in force across the road to Calais. You could see the highway all broken up where they had retreated. Their march was miles wider than ours. By which we knew that they had a very much larger army than we did. And Bardolph stole a pyx from the church at Corbie, and the King had him hanged for it. He was strung up on a tree, right next to the church, in sight of the whole army. Pistol pleaded for him, but to no avail. The pyx was worthless, made of copper gilt, which Bardolph had thought gold. I was not permitted to speak to the King myself. I saluted my hanged man with the hilt of my sword as we marched under him. His nose was executed, and his fire was out.

  The attentive reader – if ever I win one, that ideal reader suffering from an ideal insomnia, reading my every word with eyes in search of a waking dream – the Attentive Reader will remark that although I have got myself to France (and that no mean feat of seamanship and engineering, given a womb like mine, and the fact that none of our ships was more than five hundred tons), still, I have not, as promised, handed over my narrative to Peter Basset.

  Dear Attentive Reader, the reason is Basset. Looking over his Latin got me to sleep for seven nights in a row. To set Scrope and Worcester to serving up this gruel again in translation would do no service to the richness of my days.

  I am a banquet, or I am nothing.

  Besides, I would miss my Days – which is to say, the time I delight in most (aside and apart from certain slippery interludes with my niece) in every twenty-four hours that pass. Which time I spend in remembering. And then dictating and discoursing and descanting. And generally spurring my secretaries to set down in these pages my exploits and my rages and my jests and my opinions.