Agincourt

by Bernard Cornwell

  “God be with you, John,” Sir William Porter said nervously. He had moved to be next to his friend.

  “I think God will let us win,” Sir John said loudly.

  “I wish God had sent us a thousand more English men-at-arms,” Sir William said.

  “You heard what our king said,” Sir John shouted in response, “don’t wish for another man on our side! Why share the victory? We’re English! If we were only half our number we would be enough to slaughter these turd-sucking sons of rancid whores!”

  “God help us,” Sir William said softly.

  “Do what I say, William,” Sir John said quietly. “Let them come at you, step back, then strike. Once you have the first man down you’ve made an obstacle for the second. You understand me?”

  Sir William nodded. The two sides were now close enough for men on either side to recognize each other by their jupons, except the surcoats of the French were so spattered with mud that some were hard to read and nearly every surcoat had two or more arrows caught in its folds.

  “Then kill the second man,” Sir John went on. “Don’t use your sword. A sword’s no good in this fight. Hammer the bastards down with a poleax. Stun them, break their legs, crack their skulls. Put the second man down, William, and the third can’t reach you without stumbling over two corpses.”

  “I’d rather use a lance,” Sir William said diffidently.

  “Then stab at their visors,” Sir John said. “That’s the weakest point in armor. Ram it home, William, and make the goddam bastards suffer.” The French were fewer than fifty paces away. The arrow strikes had almost stopped, though a few bodkins still streaked across the face of the advancing enemy to strike from the flank. The archers posted between the battles were readying to file back between the men-at-arms so that the English line of fully-armored men would be continuous. Those archers still had a few arrows left and were shooting them fast before they were ordered to the rear. More Frenchmen went down. One, an arrow deep in his belly, knelt and then opened his visor to vomit a mix of puke and blood before the men behind trod him into the furrows.

  “We’re three ranks deep,” Sir John said, “and they’re at least twenty ranks deep. The men behind will push the men in front and so they’re going to be forced onto our blades.” He grinned suddenly. “And we’re sober, William. We ran out of wine so we’re fighting sober, but I’ll wager half their army is soaked in wine. God is with us, William.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Believe it?” Sir John laughed. “I know it! Now brace yourselves!”

  The noise was rising as the enemy shouted their war cries. Off to Sir John’s left where a thick crowd of Frenchmen was advancing on the king’s banner, he could see the oriflamme, red and wicked, high on its pole, and then he forgot that symbol because the enemy in front had summoned a last great effort. They were shouting, they were even trying to run, they were coming to take their victory.

  Their lances were poised to strike. They were screaming. “Saint Denis! Montjoie! Montjoie!” and the English were howling like huntsmen closing on their prey.

  “Now!” Sir John bellowed. “Now!”

  Sir Martin shoved Melisande down, planting his hand between her breasts and thrusting hard and quickly so that she fell back between the trees on the stream’s bank. “There,” he said, “you just stay there like a good little girl. No!” he held up a hand as she tried to scramble away. There was a terrible threat in that raised hand and Melisande went still again, making Sir Martin smile. He had yellowed stumps for teeth. “I’ve got a knife somewhere,” he told her, “I know I do.” He fumbled in a pouch at his belt. “A good knife, too. Oh! Here it is!” He smiled as he showed her the short blade. “Put a knife to thy throat, the holy book says, if thou art a man of appetite, and I am, I am, but I don’t want to cut your pretty throat, girl. It does spoil matters if you’re scrambling about in blood. So just be good and lie there like a nice little girl and it’ll soon be over.” He laughed at that, then knelt over her, his knees either side of her belly. “But I do think we want you naked. Naked is blessed, girl. In nakedness lies truth. Those are the words of our Lord and Savior.” He had invented the text, but in his mind it still had the ring of scriptural truth. He planted his left hand on her breasts, making her whimper. He was grinning, and in his deepset eyes Melisande saw the glints of madness. She hardly moved, she hardly dared move because the knife was coming toward her throat, but she groped to find the neck of her sack and slowly pulled it toward her.

  “And what shall divide us from the love of Christ?” Sir Martin asked her in a hoarse voice, “tell me that, eh?” He grinned still, reaching for the neck of her dress with his left hand. “That’s what the holy scriptures ask us, girl, they ask us what shall divide us from Christ’s love! What shall divide you and me, eh? Not tribulation, the word of the Lord says, nor distress, nor persecution, nor hunger, are you listening to me?”

  Melisande nodded. The sack inched toward her and she felt for its opening.

  “The words of God, little girl,” Sir Martin said, this time relying on genuine words of scripture, “written for our comfort by the blessed Saint Paul himself. Neither danger nor the sword shall keep us from Christ’s love, and nor, the apostle says, will nakedness!” And with that he slashed at her dress with the short knife and, with a twitching grimace, ripped the cloth down so that her breasts were exposed.

  “Oh my,” Sir Martin said reverently, “oh my, oh my, oh my. Nakedness will not keep you from Christ’s love, my child, that is the promise of the scripture. You should be glad of my coming. You should rejoice in it.” He no longer straddled her, but knelt beside her as he tore the linen dress down to its lower hem and then he stared with awed reverence at her pale body. Melisande lay still, her right hand inside the sack now, but not moving.

  “We went naked, girl, before woman brought sin into the world,” Sir Martin said, “and it is only meet and just that woman should be punished for that first sin. Don’t you agree?” A vagary of the wind brought the sound of shouting from the high plateau and the priest turned and looked at the distant crest for an instant. Melisande thrust her hand deeper into the sack, fumbling for one of the short leather-fledged bolts. She went still again as Sir Martin looked back to her. “They’re having their games up there,” he said. “They do like to fight, they do, but the Frenchies will win this one! There’s thousands of the bastards! Your Nick will go down, girl. Down to a Frenchie’s sword. Cos you’re a Frenchie, aren’t you? A pretty little Frenchie. I’m just sorry your Nick will never know I’ve punished you for your sins. Woman brought sin into the world and woman must be punished. I’d like your Nick to die knowing I’d punished you, but he won’t, and so it is, so it falls out, so the good Lord disposes. My Thomas will probably die too, and that’s a pity, cos I do like my Thomas, but I’ve other sons. Maybe you’ll have one for me?” He smiled at that idea as he fumbled to hitch up his robe. “I won’t die. The Frenchies won’t kill a priest cos they really don’t want to go to hell. And if you’re nice to me, little girl, you won’t die either. You can live and have my little baby. Maybe we’ll call him Thomas? Right! Get those pretty legs apart.”

  Melisande did not move, but the priest kicked at her knees, then kicked harder and so forced his foot between her thighs. “Our Henry has led his men into the devil’s shit-pot, hasn’t he?” he said. “And now they’re all going to be dead. They’re all going to be dead and there’ll just be you and me, little girl, just you and me, so you might as well be nice to me.” He pulled the black robe above his waist and grinned at her. “Handsome, isn’t he? Now, little one, make him welcome.”

  He forced his knees between her legs.

  “I’ve been wanting to do this,” he said, kneeling above her, “forever such a long time.” He gave a spasm, then leaned forward, propping himself on his left hand while still holding the knife to her throat with his right. A second pouch was about his neck, tied next to a wooden crucifix with a leather cord, and b
oth cross and pouch swung free, annoying the priest. “Don’t need those, do we?” he asked. “They just gets in the way, girl.” He used his knife hand to take the pouch and crucifix from his neck. The pouch clinked as he dropped it on the stream’s bank and the sound made him grin. “That’s Frenchie gold, little girl, gold that I found in Harfleur, and if you’re nice to me I’ll give you a groat or two. You are going to be nice, aren’t you? All quiet and nice like a good little girl?”

  Melisande pushed her hand deeper into the sack and found what she wanted.

  “I shall be nice,” she said in a frightened voice.

  “Oh you will,” Sir Martin said hoarsely, putting the knife back to her throat, “you surely will.”

  Sir John stepped back. Two paces were sufficient. At first he thought he had called the command too soon, then feared it was too late because his feet were stuck in the mud, but he wrenched them free and stumbled back two paces and the opposing Frenchmen gave a shout, thinking the English were trying to run away, then their lances thrust into empty air and the momentum of the lunges unbalanced them, and that was when Sir John struck. “Now!” he bellowed. “Strike!” and he rammed his own lance forward, spearing the iron-tipped point into the groin of the closest enemy. The English lances, like the French, had been cut down, but the French had cut their shafts shorter and so did not have the reach of the English weapons. Sir John’s lance slammed into metal and he leaned into the blow and saw the enemy fold over the point, and he pulled the lance back, watching the man fall, then struck it forward again.

  The French, wasting their first blows on air, were stumbling. They were tired and could not pull their feet out of the sticky furrows and the force of the English lance blows was toppling them. To Sir John’s left and right there were men on their knees, and he slammed the lance hard into the visored face of a man in the second rank to throw him backward. Then he hurled the lance down and reached behind with his right hand. “Poleax!”

  His squire gave him the weapon.

  And the killing could start.

  A lance struck Sir John’s head. His visor was missing and the Frenchman had tried to skewer Sir John’s eyes, but the blow glanced off his helmet and Sir John pushed a step forward and swung the poleax in a short cut that smacked on the man’s helmet, crushing it, and so another man was down in the mud. A whole rank of men had stumbled, and Sir John made certain they stayed down by cracking the lead-weighted hammer on their helmets. The man who had folded around Sir John’s lance was trying to rise again and Sir John chopped the ax blade hard against his backplate, then shouted at his squire to finish the man off. “Open his visor,” he shouted, “kill him!” Then Sir John planted his feet and began picking his enemies.

  Those enemies were already encumbered. The first rank of Frenchmen was mostly on the ground where they were bleeding in a tangle of bodies and discarded lances, and the following ranks had to stumble over those obstacles and as they tried so they were met with ax blades, mace heads, and lance points. It might not have mattered if the French had been able to negotiate the obstacles in their own time, but they were pushed onto them by the press of men behind and so they stumbled haplessly into the English blades. “Kill them!” Sir John bellowed. “Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!” That was when the battle joy came to him, the pure joy of being a warlord, armored and armed, dangerous and invincible. He used the poleax’s hammerhead to beat down armored enemies. The hammer did not need to pierce armor, few weapons could, but the weight alone could stun a man and one blow was usually sufficient to put a man down or cripple him.

  The French, it seemed to Sir John, moved with a painful slowness, while he was endowed with a godlike speed. He was grinning and he was watching three or four enemies at once, picking which one to attack first and already knowing how the second and third would be destroyed. They came to him and he sensed their panic. The rearward ranks of the French carried short weapons, maces or swords or axes, but they had no time to use them as they were forced onto the bodies of the fallen. They tripped into the blows of Sir John and his men, and so many were put down that Sir John had to negotiate the dead himself. Now the English were carrying the fight to the French. Nine hundred men were attacking eight thousand, but the nine hundred could take care where they stepped without fear of being pushed from behind.

  A Frenchman in mud-spattered armor that had been scoured until it shone like silver, lunged a sword at Sir John who let the weapon waste its force against the cuisse protecting his left thigh. The man to Sir John’s left battered the polished helmet with a poleax hammer, and the Frenchman collapsed like a felled ox as Sir John rammed his pole’s spike into the face of a man wearing the livery of a wheatsheaf. The spike mangled visor, teeth, and palate, jerking the man’s head back as his body was pushed forward. Sir John let his neighbor crack a hammer against the fallen man’s helmet as he back-swung his poleax into a pot-helm surmounted by a plume of feathers. “Come on, you bastards! I want you!” Sir John shouted. He was laughing. At that moment it never once occurred to him that some Frenchmen were eager for the renown that would follow the death or capture of Sir John Cornewaille. They came and they fell, victims of the wet ground and of the obstacles they could not see through their closed visors, and they came to the short, hard blows of a poleax that made more obstacles.

  “Stay tight, stay tight!” Sir John bellowed, making sure there was a man to his left and Sir William to his right. You fought shoulder to shoulder to give the enemy no room to pierce the line, and Sir John’s men-at-arms were fighting as he had trained them to fight. They had stepped over the first fallen Frenchmen and the second line of English were lifting enemy visors and sliding knives into the eyes or mouths of the wounded to stop them from striking up from the ground. Frenchmen screamed when they saw the blade coming, they twisted in the mud to escape the quick stabs, they died in spasms, and still more came to be hammered or chopped or crushed. Some Frenchmen, reckoning themselves safe from arrows, had lifted their visors and Sir John slammed the poleax’s spike into a man’s face, twisting it as it pierced the eye socket, dragging it back jellied and bloodied, watching as the man, in frantic dying pain, flailed and impeded more Frenchmen. Sir William Porter was stabbing his lance at men’s faces. One blow was usually enough to unbalance an enemy and Sir William’s other neighbor would finish the job with a hammer blow. Sir William, usually a quiet and studious man, was growling and snarling as he picked his victims. “God’s blood, William,” Sir John shouted, “but this is joy!”

  The noise was unending. Steel on steel, screams, war-shouts. Enough Frenchmen had fallen to stop the ponderous charge, and the men behind could not negotiate the piled bodies without stumbling into the English blades. There was blood in the furrows. Sir John stepped on a wounded Frenchman’s helmet, unaware that he did so, but conscious that his right foot had found firm standing, and his weight drove the man’s visor into the mud that seeped through the visor holes and slowly stifled him. He drowned in mud, choking for breath as Sir John taunted the French, begged them to come to him, then stepped forward again, hungry for more death. “Kill them!” he screamed. “Kill them!” He felt a burst of energy and used it to crash into the French line, opening it so his men could follow, stabbing and lunging with the speed of Christendom’s most feared tournament fighter. He crippled men with the spike, driving it through the faulds covering their groins, and as they doubled in screaming pain he would crash the hammer or ax onto their helmets and leave it to the men behind to give the fallen enemy the mercy of death. Sir John took blows on his armor, but they were feeble until a Frenchman managed a hard swing with a poleax and Sir John was only saved because the enemy’s shaft broke and Sir John screamed in challenge and swung his own ax at the man’s legs, driving the blade through a roundel to chop into a knee. The man went down and lunged with his weapon’s broken shaft, and Sir John smashed the hammerhead onto the enemy’s helmet with such force that the steel collapsed and bloody ooze spurted from the visor. Sir John and hi
s men-at-arms were hacking a deep hole in the crammed French ranks, killing again to make new corpses to trip the enemy.