Big John Fletcher was carried in, so pale as to be almost unrecognizable. He should by rights have died days ago; even now his breath stank of the unclean shellfish and the bad wine. But so far his strength had saved him, and its decline was dramatic. He was dying even as his friends lugged him into the sight of the overworked doctors. Crying for a priest, he lay in his own ordure, beginning to babble his confession almost before the chaplain had found a clean spot in which to kneel. Fletcher’s rolling eyes found Owen; he paused in his catalogue of sins to cry despairingly: ‘Your witchwoman warned me … she cursed me … Oh, Mary, mercy! I don’t want to die!’
Owen thought: neither do I. Hywelis! And the answer came clear, a tiny forgotten voice: you will be safe, even while Fletcher died and Owen struggled to his knees, swaying. Hands gripped and drew him up, and, staring blearily into the one bright eye of Davy Gam, he heard his native tongue.
‘Diawl! Boy, they said you were in here. Is it the belly-rot?’
Owen said stupidly: ‘I don’t know … would I be able to tell?’ and Gam began to laugh. Mixed with the groans in the tent, it sounded like demons’ laughter.
‘Duw! Owen, you’d know, you’d know! Wounded then? No, I see you’re not. What fool put you in here among the contagion? You’re filthy, bach. Come to my pavilion.’
He supported Owen outside. Fainted, did you? no shame in that. Men were fainting every minute. There was not enough food, and too few to defend the gunners. It was quiet outside now, and the pre-dawn air smelled almost sweet after the surgeon’s tent. Frogs sang from the marsh, and the birds were awakening. They walked up a little boggy rise towards the encampment. The officers’ tents with their scalloped canopies looked like some weird mushroom growth coloured pale from the candlelight within. Near the glow Gam stopped and smiled at Owen’s smoke-blackened face. Like a Moor you are, kinsman, a heathen.
‘You’re sure you’ve no flux, pain?’
‘Only deathly tired,’ Owen sighed deeply.
‘We’re both lucky. This pestilence spares none. The Duke of Clarence has taken to his bed. Morestede, the King’s surgeon, is with him; it’s grave.’
The King’s brother ill. It was as if gods and saints were toppling. Unthinkable, to associate these with pain and stench and humiliation.
‘Likewise,’ said Davy, watching him, ‘the Earls of March and Arundel. Did you think them immune, by birthright? Flesh, man! Flesh!’
The dawn was chill with the green death-smell from the marsh. Owen half-stumbled over a figure in the lee of a tent, a soldier collapsed in exhaustion or in the longest sleep of all.
‘This is not how I dreamed of our enterprise,’ he said with a tight throat.
‘Nor any of us. If we could only get inland where the ground is pure. The King swore he would have Harfleur in eight days. Their resistance is magnificent. They are so clever. Nightly their spies slip through, God knows how … they’ve even reached the Dauphin at Vernon to apprise him of how matters go.’
‘But their supplies must soon end,’ said Owen. ‘They can’t last for ever.’
Watching the ground for further hazards he did not see that Gam had stopped and was down on one knee. Only when a slight shadow, flanked by two heavier guarding figures fell across him was he aware, and hurriedly knelt. Those feet he had studied aboard La Trinité Royale, when he had served the wine. Now warily he looked up. The King’s face, its ruddiness tempered by dawnlight, looked drawn, the skin tight over the cheeks and the sharp nose. But the eyes were unwearied, the voice calm.
‘How goes it, then?’ he asked Davydd Gam.
‘Sire, the same. I have just come from my lord of Suffolk’s camp. His illness worsens. And the tower we breached yesterday has been shored up. Is your Grace in health?’
‘Perfectly.’ But Owen, lowering his eyes again, saw the tiniest betrayal of fatigue or uncertainty. The King’s calf-muscles were swollen taut with fitness, an athlete’s legs, yet they shuddered almost imperceptibly.
‘We will smoke out these rats,’ the King was saying. ‘We’ll have them on their knees, obeisant, with ropes round their gizzards just as the great Edward the Third did when he took Calais …’
Faintly from the pavilion where the Duke of Clarence lay sick filtered a plangent thread of tune. Like a hound scenting sport, the King’s head turned.
‘The Irish minstrel,’ he said absently. ‘He plays well.’ Words burst incontinently from Owen.
He said, excited, despite his tiredness: ‘No, Sire. It’s a Welsh harp. Good sycamore, strung more sturdily than the Irish, better proportioned. I play one at home.’
He bit his lip; once more he had broken protocol. Yet his glance flicked up once more to the King’s face. It was unoffended.
‘I, too,’ said Henry’s rather flat voice. ‘I learned, between skirmishes, in Wales. I found it somewhat difficult. But how sweet a sound!’ Then he gazed in belated recognition at Owen. ‘My cup-bearer aboard ship! A minstrel too? As David soothed Saul, you shall play for me, once Harfleur is taken.’
‘Jesu grant this soon,’ said Gam.
Henry continued to survey Owen. He saw the crusted blood on his clothes.
‘You’re wounded. And hungry too, no doubt. The new victuals have come from Bordeaux. I would not have kept him kneeling here,’ he said to Gam, and Owen, ashamed of his filthy appearance, cried: ‘No, Sire! I lay where a man had died …’
‘Too many die,’ said Henry shortly. He swung round as two men with lanterns hastened up behind him. A greybearded chaplain and a surgeon, his apron bloody black.
‘Sire,’ said the doctor. ‘I must report the sickness. It’s worse. Beyond control. Two thousand deathly ill, and fifteen hundred dead. It spreads faster than the black plague from which Christ preserve us.’
‘Great God!’ said Henry, almost to himself. ‘Was it for this I pawned my lands, broke up my stepmother’s jewels?’
‘Sire,’ said the chaplain. ‘I must beg you come swiftly. His Grace the Bishop of Norwich asks for you. He is, I fear, in extremis.’
Music, ambition, regret, all fled Harry’s mind. His dismay was apparent; his face grew old and stark.
‘Courtenay sick? But he … he was so careful. He never touched the wine. My own butlers prepared his table …’
The good new bread and beef and salt, the fresh fish, brought from Bordeaux by wagons axle-deep in marsh, horses lashed over roads dirty with ambush. Yet Courtenay sick! Unbearable. Did God’s cause demand other sacrifices, as dear as this? He drew sour air into his chest, and said:
‘Why was I not earlier informed?’
‘It took the Lord Bishop in a matter of hours.’
‘But he was careful!’ he repeated in disbelief. Abstemious, determined… my friend and ghostly comforter … Discipline. Be apart from emotion. Even this most terrible news must not undermine him. He loved the Bishop far better than his own brothers. And Courtenay’s sickness served to epitomize the malady afflicting this enterprise. The abortive siege. The assured impertinence of Harfleur’s garrison commander, the Sire d’Estouteville. A nightmare disillusion. Build the walls of Jerusalem, indeed! He could not even force the wicket gate of France! He thought: I shall never be able to return home if I fail. I shall go East, with the handful of sick men left to me, wandering the world till eternity, a lion no longer but a wounded jackal. Owen’s face came into focus. These young men, so keen, as I was at Shrewsbury. Wasted now, as I was not. Are my fighting hopes so short lived? Am I visited with the sins of my father? Am I judged?
Yet he said calmly: ‘Go, eat and rest before the day begins. There will be food and drink for you and all the wounded and weary. Be undismayed.’
The surgeon said urgently: ‘Your Grace, the Bishop …’ and Henry turned saying softly, yes, I come, walking away past the pavilions whose glow was dimmed against the growing dawn.
Owen got up. How strange he is, almost unconcerned, save for that trembling, that determination. And he acknowledged me, a nothing.
&nb
sp; ‘He’s confident,’ he said to Davy Gam. ‘And kind.’
Gam answered with derision. ‘He conceals himself. He always does. He’s full of doubts, but he’d tear out his heart rather than admit them. Kind … maybe, yes.’ His voice softened. ‘He noted your face, your words. He’ll not forget you. He forgets nothing, no one.’
‘I felt … he really cared for us.’
Gam rubbed the blindness beneath his eye-patch.
‘He does, boy. And maybe in you he saw himself. Though he’s no longer a youth. Yes, he cares. That’s why we follow, and he knows it. We may follow him yet into Hell.’
It was accomplished. Harfleur had fallen. In his silk pavilion outside the walls, the King decided that Sir John Holland, saviour of the hour, should be created Earl of Huntingdon for his peerless service. It was appropriate that he should be given the title taken from his father by Henry’s own father, Bolingbroke. Sir John had wrought miracles, although the laxness of the Dauphin at Vernon had played its part: Louis had virtually abandoned Harfleur which, with its diminished supplies, its sick and starving people, and its garrison’s strength finally lowered, had weakened sufficiently for the final assault on the Leure gate to be successful. And now he prepared to receive the keys of the town. But his triumph was tempered by the wasted weeks, the thought of the burial pit filled with pointless death, and his heart was in private mourning.
Bitterness hardened his resolve that Harfleur should be made to pay for the grave or mortal sickness of March and Arundel and Suffolk and his brother of Clarence. Above all, for Courtenay. He sat very still, his embroidered gown spread out like stiff plumage, his eyes glinting with temper and grief. Harfleur should be humiliated duly. He did not stop to wonder whether this was what Courtenay would have wished, for that kindly wisdom was stilled for ever.
He had watched him die. Courtenay had been lucid, even eloquent throughout, and though his body was wrung out like a rag from the disease, he seemed remote and uncomplaining. Even the air within his tent remained sweet and decent. Harry had been watching while the Bishop dozed, a deathly sleep, the fine features marmoreal like an effigy’s, the hands closed firmly about the crucifix on his breast. When he awoke, he smiled.
‘It is your birthday, Harry.’
‘It is?’ He could hardly answer.
‘And I have no gift. Save my love, my blessing.’
The King bowed his head. Courtenay murmured: ‘I’ve been on such a long journey this day. A pilgrimage … I did not reach the shrine … so near …’ He tried to sit, and Harry supported him.
‘That’s better,’ Courtenay said, and Harry’s heart lifted, but only for an instant.
The Bishop said: ‘You must rest.’ Then: ‘But then, you never need to rest. Your strength is your shield, son. Cherish it.’
Hoping in some way to imbue the Bishop with that envied strength, he placed his hand on the chill hand over the crucifix. Immediately he felt, through his own flesh, Courtenay’s anguish. It lanced him, settling leech-like in his bowels. He knew all about contagion, but kept his hand steady on the Bishop’s. Benedict Nichols, Bishop of Bangor, and Thomas Morestede, chief surgeon, stood silent behind him. Both had done all they could. He dismissed them and knelt at Courtenay’s side. Into the sphere of this passing crept all other losses and deaths, long before Scrope’s treachery to the death of his own young mother, Mary de Bohun. And now, this waste and robbery, all because Harfleur had defied him! In the bowels of Christ, he thought savagely, they were unworthy to be called his people!
He had offered them chivalry, honour, protection. In his preliminary letters to Charles of France, he had stressed that he only claimed what was his by right. He had had no scruples at styling himself King of England and France. He had ardently expressed his desire to avoid the slaughter of innocents. He had advised Charles to think of eternity, when both must answer to the Throne above. And the more concessions Charles had offered, the more his own dissatisfaction had grown. Not enough were the important principal towns and provinces, nor the 800,000 crowns, the dowry for the Princess, nor Katherine herself. He must have everything, or be seen to have failed. Then came the final spark that hit home. The emissary, the Archbishop of Bourges, had declared: ‘Sir, the King of France is the true King, and with respect to those things to which you say you have a right, you have no lordship not even to the kingdom of England; which belongs to the true heirs of the late King Richard …’
Courtenay sighed. From the borders of that other kingdom his eyes watched, still caring, knowing Henry’s doubt.
‘Do not deny your cause.’ He moved his fingers feebly beneath the King’s hand.
‘Is the cause good?’ He would have said this to no living person, but Courtenay seemed no longer of the living.
‘It is yours. Go and fight for it. If you betray it now, you betray yourself. Make war, then peace. But spare the innocent, my son.’
‘I will spare Holy Church. None shall sully her. I will honour her and say: in hoc signo vinces.’ Deep within, the shared pain moved. ‘But will the cause be fulfilled?’ The Bishop stared up into the shadows of the tent, his free hand flat on his crucifix as if he shielded it.
‘Will it? King Charles has come to Mantes himself, bringing the oriflamme of St Denis, to rally the people. He is saner than for years—strong enough to arm a great force …forgive me. I weary you.’
‘No, no. Continue, my son.’
‘I had hoped to persuade Jean sans Peur to my side, but it’s said that Burgundy is ready to join Valois. The French will gladly enlist under such power.’
The Bishop’s faint smile was macabre on his dying face.
‘Harry … if you do not know these French you are unready to rule them. Their armies are not like your armies … their obedience is a flickering wanton light against your strong flame. They are afraid .…’
He bent closer.
‘Afraid?’
The Bishop’s eyelids drooped. His voice was very weak.
‘… more afraid of the tax-gatherers … than any invading army …’
Harry, staring at him, thought: Yes! and the structure of even their payment for their troops is not the stable convention that we know. Therefore the discipline will be poor .… deserters numerous, morale variable … the French do not welcome a fight, otherwise why would Charles be so content, earlier, to parley? That Welsh boy, with the gold hair and the bright eyes and the dirty face … worth two of their elegant prancing knights. He saw the Bishop’s eyes fall open again and was about to say: you have elated me! but saw that he was too late. Courtenay was over the border; he had reached the shrine. A little of its surpassing gold shone in his eyes. Harry closed it in with a tender downstroke of his hand. He was in a tumult of grief and enmity and fresh hope. In my singleness is security, he thought. My men seek no other leader, and there’s the adherence between England and France; when Armagnac captains refused to serve under a Burgundian, and when Jean sans Peur locked up his own son, Philip, rather than see him enlist in the ranks of Valois … confusion, faction! as potent weapons as the burning logs placed across the moat by Sir John Holland’s men to fire the Leure gate or the gun-stones that had thereafter brought chaos into Harfleur as far as the church of St Martin. (God forgive me for St Martin!) From where he now sat he could see the ruined steeple and the still smoking bastion. Arundel and March might be deathly sick and Suffolk dead with two thousand others, and Clarence sent home to Southampton to die or recover. But the town was his. Hostages were taken. The cause was good. He prayed again, silent words which, through their very familiarity were as integral and natural as the beating of his heart.
Beside him stood Humphrey of Gloucester, sumptuously robed and jewelled. Near him was Benedict Nichols, who had lately celebrated Mass in the smoking shell of St Martin, and by him the Earl of Dorset and Lord Fitzhugh, with the ancient Sir Thomas Erpingham, and John Holland, hero of the hour. On the King’s right Sir Gilbert Umfraville held a pikestaff surmounted by the King’s tilting helm
and crown. Humphrey of Gloucester broke the waiting silence.
‘How much longer, Sire?’
Henry said: ‘Until my honour is satisfied and their penitence is complete.’
Their humiliation. He had ordained the Sire de Gaucourt, the Sire de Bracquemont and twenty-four French hostages should proceed behind the Eucharist into the English pavilions, where they were to kneel before lesser knights. Each was wearing a felon’s rope about his neck. Faces white or red, they looked like cattle going to market.
At last they knelt before him. The Sire de Gaucourt held the keys of the town upon a cushion. The rope chafed him and the sackcloth shirt he had been bidden to wear pricked his flesh. Henry stared over the hostages’ heads while another half-hour passed and one of the penitents swooned. The tilting helm grew heavy on Sir Gilbert’s pike. Old Erpingham’s bladder swelled painfully. Finally Henry lowered his eyes. The Earl of Dorset brought the keys to him and he said:
‘You have withheld my town from me for too long. Yet as you have given yourselves to my mercy, I shall not be merciless.’
He bade them rise. Agonized, they crawled upright.
‘You shall sup with us.’ And they bowed dispiritedly.
The French noblemen did justice to an elaborate meal, agitating bellies shrunken by the siege. They looked bewilderedly at Henry who harangued them from the dais, and wondered why he himself ate nothing. Harfleur, he declared, should be an English town like Calais. The citizens would stay to rebuild, working in harness with emigrants from England who would settle by grants of demesne.
‘Every man shall take the oath of allegiance save those wealthy enough to pay for their freedom, and these shall be sent captive to England until their ransom is raised. I release the Sire de Gaucourt and the Sire de Bracquemont and as many noble knights who are willing to be paroled, provided they bring ransom to Calais at an appointed time.’
Crown in Candlelight Page 17