Agincourt

by Bernard Cornwell

  Dawn was cold and gray. A few spatters of rain blew fitfully across the plowed field, but Hook sensed the night’s downpours had ended. Small patches of mist clung to the furrows and lingered in the dripping trees.

  The drummers behind the center of the English line were beating a quick rhythm that was punctuated by the flaring sound of trumpets. The musicians were massed where the king’s banner, the largest in the army, was flanked by the cross of Saint George, by the banner of Edward the Confessor, and by the flag of the Holy Trinity. That quartet of banners, all flown from extra-long poles, was in the middle of the center battle, while the flanking battles, the rearguard and vanguard, were similarly dominated by their leaders’ standards. There were at least fifty other flags flying in the damp air above Henry’s men-at-arms, but those English standards were as nothing to the array of silk and linen that was flaunted by the French. “Count the banners,” Thomas Evelgold had suggested as a way of estimating the French numbers, “and reckon every flag is a lord with twenty men.” Some French lords would have fewer men-at-arms and most would have far more, but Tom Evelgold was certain his method would yield an approximation of the enemy’s numbers, except that even Hook, with his good eyesight, could not distinguish the separate flags. There were simply too many. “There are thousands of the bastards,” Evelgold said unhappily, “and look at all those goddam crossbowmen!” The French archers were on the enemy’s flanks, but some way behind the leading men-at-arms.

  “You wait!” an elderly man-at-arms, gray-haired and mounted on a mud-spattered gelding, shouted at the archers. He was just one of the numerous men who had come to offer advice or orders. “You wait,” he called again, “till I throw my baton in the air!” The man held up a short, thick staff that was wrapped in green cloth and surmounted by golden finials. “That’s the signal to shoot arrows! No one is to shoot before that! You watch for my baton!”

  “Who’s that?” Hook asked Evelgold.

  “Sir Thomas Erpingham.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “The man who throws the baton,” Evelgold said.

  “I shall throw it high!” Sir Thomas shouted, “like this!” He threw the baton vigorously so that it circled high in the rain above him. He lunged to catch it as it fell, but missed. Hook wondered if that was a bad omen.

  “Fetch it, Horrocks,” Evelgold said, “and look lively, lad!” Horrocks could not run, the furrows and ridges were too thick with mud and so his feet sank up to his ankles, but he retrieved the green stick and held it to the gray-haired knight. Sir Thomas thanked him, then moved down the line of archers to shout his orders again. Hook noticed how Sir Thomas’s horse struggled in the plowed land. “They must have set the share deep,” Evelgold said.

  “Winter wheat,” Hook said.

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Always plow deeper for winter wheat,” Hook explained.

  “I never had to plow,” Evelgold said. He had been a tanner before he was appointed as a ventenar to Sir John.

  “Plow deep in autumn and shallow in spring,” Hook said.

  “I suppose it’ll save the bastards from digging us graves,” Evelgold said dourly, “they can just roll us into those big furrows and kick the soil over us.”

  “Sky’s clearing,” Hook said. Off to the west, above the ramparts of the small castle of Agincourt that just showed above the woodland, the light was brightening.

  “At least the bowstrings will be dry,” Evelgold remarked, “which means we might kill a few of the goddam bastards before they slaughter us.”

  The enemy flew more banners and they also had more musicians. The English trumpeters were playing brief series of defiant notes, then pausing to let the drummers beat their sharp, insistent rhythm, but the French trumpets never stopped. They clawed at English ears, a braying sound that rose and fell on the cold wind. Most of the French army was on foot, like the English, but on either wing Hook could see masses of mounted knights. The horses wore long linen trappers embroidered with coats of arms. Their riders were trying to keep the beasts warm by walking them up and down. Lances pricked the sky. “The goddam bastards will come soon,” Tom Scarlet said.

  “Maybe,” Hook said, “maybe not.” He half wished the French would come and get the ordeal over, and he half wished he was safely back in England, abed.

  “Don’t string up till they move,” Evelgold called to Sir John’s archers. He had offered the advice at least six times already, but none of the bowmen seemed to notice. They shivered and watched the enemy. “Shit!” Evelgold added.

  “What?” Hook asked, alarmed.

  “I just stepped in some.”

  “That’s supposed to bring you luck,” Hook said.

  “Then I’d better dance in the goddam stuff.”

  Priests were saying mass among the archers and, one by one, the men went to receive the bread of life and have their sins forgiven. The king was ostentatiously kneeling bareheaded before one of his chaplains out in front of the center battle. He had ridden the line once, mounted on a small white horse, and the gilded crown that circled his battle-helm had looked unnaturally bright in the morning’s gloom. He had chivvied men into position and leaned out of his saddle to tug at an archer’s stake to ensure it was well bedded in the soil. “God is with us, fellows!” he had called to the archers. The bowmen had started to kneel in deference, but he had waved them up. “God is on our side! Be confident!”

  “Wish God has sent more Englishmen,” a voice had dared to call from among the bowmen.

  “Never wish that!” the king had sounded cheerful. “God’s providence is sufficient! We are enough to do His work!”

  Hook hoped to God the king was right as he went back to kneel before Father Christopher who was dressed in a black priestly robe over which he wore a mud-spattered chasuble embroidered with white doves, green crosses, and the Cornewaille red lions. “I’ve sinned, father,” Hook said, and he made a confession he had never made before; that he had murdered Robert Perrill and still planned to murder both Thomas Perrill and Sir Martin. It was hard to say the words, but Hook was driven to it by the thought, almost a certainty, that this was his last day on earth.

  Father Christopher’s hands tightened on Hook’s head. “Why did you commit murder?” he asked.

  “The Perrills murdered my grandfather, my father, and my brother,” Hook said.

  “And now you have murdered one of them,” Father Christopher said sternly. “Nick, it must finish.”

  “I hate them, father.”

  “It’s a day of battle,” Father Christopher said, “and you should go to your enemies and beg their forgiveness and make your peace.” The priest paused, but Hook said nothing. “Other men are doing that,” Father Christopher went on. “They’re seeking out their enemies and making their peace. You should do the same.”

  “I promised not to kill him in the battle,” Hook said.

  “That’s not enough, Nick. You want to go to God’s judgment with hatred in your heart?”

  “I can’t make peace with them,” Hook said, “not after they killed Michael.”

  “Christ forgave His enemies, Nick, and we are to be like Christ.”

  “I’m not Christ, father. I’m Nick Hook.”

  “And God loves you,” Father Christopher sighed, then made the sign of the cross on Nick’s head. “You will not murder either man, Nick. That is a command from God. You understand me? You will not go into this battle with hatred in your heart. That way God will look gently on you. Promise me you will think no murder, Nick.”

  It was a struggle. Hook was silent for a while, then he nodded abruptly. “I won’t kill them, father,” he said unhappily.

  “Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. You swear that?”

  There was another pause. Hook was thinking of the long years, of the embedded hatred, of the loathing he felt for Sir Martin and for Tom Perrill, and then he thought of what he had to face this day and he knew that if he were to go to heaven then he must g
ive Father Christopher the solemn promise. He nodded abruptly. “I swear it,” he said.

  Father Christopher’s hands tightened on Hook’s bare scalp again. “Your penance is to shoot well this day, Nicholas Hook. Shoot well for God and your king. Te absolvo,” he said. “Your sins are forgiven. Now look up at me.”

  Hook looked up. The rain had finally stopped. He stared into Father Christopher’s eyes as the priest took a sliver of charcoal and carefully wrote on Hook’s forehead. “There,” he said when he was finished.

  “What’s that, father?”

  Father Christopher smiled, “I’ve written IHC Nazar on your forehead. Some folk believe it protects a man from sudden death.”

  “What does it mean, father?”

  “It’s the name of Christ, the Nazarene.”

  “Write it on Melisande’s forehead, father.”

  “I will, Hook, of course I will. Now ready yourself for the body of Christ.” Hook received the sacrament and then, as other men were doing and as the king had done, he took a pinch of wet earth and swallowed it with the wafer to show he was ready for death. The gesture proclaimed he was prepared to receive the earth as the earth might have to receive him. “God bless you, Nick,” Father Christopher said.

  “I hope we meet when it’s over, father,” Hook said, pulling the helmet over his aventail.

  “I pray that too,” the priest said.

  “The shit-eating bastards must come soon,” Will of the Dale grumbled when Hook rejoined his men, yet the French showed no sign of wanting to attack. They waited, their deep ranks almost filling the wide space between the woods. The English heralds, resplendent in their liveries and holding their long white wands, had ridden halfway to the enemy’s line where they had been met by French and Burgundian heralds and now they all made a bright group that sat on their horses at the edge of the trees beside a tumbledown hovel with a mossy roof. They would observe the battle together and at its end they would decree the winner.

  “Come on, you goddam bastards,” a man grumbled.

  But the goddam bastards did not come. Their trumpets howled, but the long steel ranks showed no sign of being ready to advance. They waited. The trapper-bright horses milled about to hide the crossbowmen behind. A brief ray of sunlight shone on the center of their line and Hook saw the oriflamme, the red forked pennant that announced to the French that they were to take no prisoners. Kill everyone.

  “Evelgold! Hook! Magot! Candeler!” Now it was Sir John Cornewaille’s turn to pace in front of the archers. “Come here! The four of you!”

  Hook joined the other three sergeants. It was extraordinarily hard to walk through the deep plow because the clay soil had turned to a viscous reddish mud that clung to his boots. It was even harder for Sir John who was wearing full plate armor, sixty pounds of steel, so that he lurched as he walked, forced to drag each steel-plated foot out of the earth’s sucking grip. Sir John struggled to a place some forty or fifty paces ahead of the archers and there waited for his sergeants. “You always want to look at your own army,” he greeted them, “to see it as the enemy does. Have a look.”

  Hook turned to stare at a mud-spattered, rusted and bedraggled army. His army. The center of the line was made of three battles, each of around three hundred men-at-arms. The central battle was commanded by the king, the one on the far right by Lord Camoys, while the left-hand battle was led by the Duke of York. Between the three battles were two small groups of archers, while on either flank were the much larger contingents of bowmen. Those two flanking groups, with their stakes, were angled ahead of the line’s center so that their arrows could fly in from the sides. “So what do the French do?” Sir John demanded.

  “Attack,” Evelgold said dourly.

  “Attack what and why?” Sir John asked harshly. None of the four archers answered, instead they gazed at their own small army and wondered what reply Sir John wanted. “Think!” Sir John growled, his bright blue eyes darting between his sergeants. “You’re a Frenchman! You live in some shit-spattered manor with rats in the damp walls and mice dancing in the roof. What do you want?”

  “Money,” Hook suggested.

  “So what do you attack?”

  “The flags,” Thomas Evelgold said.

  “Because that’s where the money is,” Sir John said. “The goddamned bastards are flying the oriflamme,” he went on, “but that means nothing. They want prisoners. They want rich prisoners. They want the king, the Duke of York, the Duke of Gloucester, they want me, they want ransoms! There’s no profit in slaughtering archers, so the bastards will attack the men-at-arms. They’ll attack the flags, but some might come for you so drive them into the center with arrows. That’s what you do! Drive their flanks into the center. Because that’s where I can kill them.”

  “If we’ve got enough arrows,” Evelgold said doubtfully.

  “Save enough!” Sir John said forcibly, “because if you run out of arrows you’re going to have to fight them hand to hand and they’re trained to that, you’re not.”

  “You trained us, Sir John,” Hook said, remembering the winter of practice with swords and axes.

  “You’re half-trained, but the other archers?” Sir John asked derisively, and Hook, looking at the waiting men, knew they were no match for French men-at-arms. The archers were tailors and cordwainers, fullers and carpenters, millers and butchers. They were tradesmen who possessed a superb skill, the ability to draw the cord of a yew bow to their ear and send the arrow on its deathward journey. They were killers, but they were not men hardened to war by tournaments and trained from childhood in the discipline of blades. Many of them had no armor other than a padded jacket, and some did not even possess that small protection. “God keep the French from getting among them!” Sir John said.

  None of the sergeants responded. They were thinking of what would happen when French men-at-arms, clad in steel, came to kill them. Hook shivered, then was distracted by the sight of five horsemen riding under the English royal banner toward the waiting French army. “What are they doing, Sir John?” Evelgold asked.

  “The king has sent them to make an appeal for peace,” Sir John said, “they’ll demand that the French yield the crown to Henry, and then we’ll agree not to slaughter them.”

  Evelgold just stared at Sir John as if he did not believe what he had heard. Hook suppressed a laugh and Sir John shrugged. “So they won’t accept the terms,” he said, “and that means we fight, but it doesn’t mean that they’ll attack us.”

  “They won’t?” Magot asked.

  “We have to get past them to reach Calais, so maybe we’ll have to cut our way through them.”

  “Jesus,” Evelgold muttered.

  “They want us to attack them, Sir John?” Magot asked.

  “I would, if I were them!” Sir John turned to stare at the enemy. “They don’t want to cross this ground any more than we do, but they don’t need to cross it. We do. We have to reach Calais or we die here of starvation. So if they don’t attack us, we have to attack them.”

  “Jesus,” Evelgold said again, and Hook tried to imagine the effort that would be needed to cross that half-mile of sucking, slippery, clinging mud. Let the French attack, he thought, and suddenly shivered violently. He was cold, he was hungry, he was tired. The fear came in waves and was turning his bowels to water. He was not the only one, lots of men were slipping into the woods to empty their bowels.

  “I need to go to the woods,” he said.

  “If you need to shit, do it here,” Sir John said harshly, then shouted at the massed archers. “No one’s to use the woods!” He feared that men, losing courage, would hide in the trees. “You’re to shit where you stand!”

  “Shit and die,” Tom Evelgold said.

  “And go to hell with fouled breeches,” Sir John snarled, “who cares?” He looked at each of his sergeants in turn, then spoke with a quiet intensity. “This battle’s not lost. Remember, we have archers, they don’t.”

  “But we don’t have e
nough arrows,” Evelgold said.

  “Then make each one count,” Sir John said, impatient with his centenar’s pessimism, then scowled at Hook. “Jesus, man, can’t you do that upwind of me?”

  “Sorry, Sir John.”

  Sir John grinned. “At least you can take a shit. Try doing that in full armor. I tell you, we’re not going to smell like lilies by the time we’ve finished our work today.” He gazed at the enemy, his bright eyes looking at the oriflamme. “And one last thing,” he said forcefully, “no one’s to start taking prisoners until we give the order that it’s safe to capture instead of kill.”

  “You think we’ll take prisoners?” Evelgold asked with astonished disbelief.

  “If men try to take prisoners too soon they weaken the line,” Sir John said, ignoring the question. “You have to fight and kill until the bastards can fight no more, and only then can you set about finding ransoms.” He clapped Evelgold on a mail-clad shoulder. “Tell your lads we’ll be feasting on captured French provisions tonight.”

  Either that, Hook thought, or eating hell’s rations. He struggled back to his men who each stood by a stake. Those stakes, over two thousand of them on this right flank of the English army, made a dense thicket of sharpened points. Men could move among them easily enough, but no warhorse could maneuver about them.

  “What did Sir John want?” Will of the Dale asked.

  “To tell you that we’ll be eating French rations tonight.”

  “He thinks they’ll take us prisoner?” Will asked skeptically.

  “No, he thinks we’ll win.”

  That prompted some bitter laughter. Hook ignored it and watched the enemy. The front rank of their dismounted men-at-arms stretched across the skyline, thick with the metal points of shortened lances. Still they did not move and still the English waited. French horsemen went on exercising their destriers and, because the horses disliked the thick furrows, many of the knights went to the grassy pastures beyond the woods. The sun climbed higher behind the thinning clouds. The king’s emissaries, sent to make an offer of peace, had met with a similar group of Frenchmen and now rode back across the plowland and, moments later, a rumor spread that the French had agreed to let the English pass, then the rumor was denied. “If they don’t want to fight,” Tom Scarlet said, “then perhaps they’ll just stand there all day!”