Crown in Candlelight

by Rosemary Hawley Jarman

  ‘I think I’m dead.’ He groaned, and sat up carefully.

  ‘It’s a scratch!’ said Page. ‘You’re charmed, Owen.’ A body with broken twisted limbs was being carried past.

  ‘Their colours were beautiful,’ said Owen. ‘The colours of death are beautiful.’

  Henry said to the few knights he had captured on the bridge:

  ‘How are the French forces deployed? Where is d’Albret’s army?’

  He knew he would be given a fair answer. Under threat of death these prisoners, like the Gascon spy, always told everything. He now learned that his army was virtually trapped. The French on the north bank were moving across the route from Corbie to Péronne, cutting off the river. Only Nesle to the east was near enough; he might reach it first. He stared at the captives; their elegance was almost unruffled by the recent skirmish. Their gilded trefoils winked from their blue tabards. They could have been riding to a tourney. One face wore a complacent sneer which enraged him.

  ‘Why do you laugh in our presence?’ he demanded. The Frenchman gave a little shrug.

  ‘I was thinking of your poor archers. Such skill wasted by the speed of our horsemen. They scarcely had chance to draw a bow!’

  Neither did they, Henry mused, his rage fading. With regret he thought of those fine weapons of polished elm, ash, hazel or best of all, yew. The arrows, fletched with duck or peacock feathers or parchment, should have brought down this gaudy cavalry …’

  ‘It was amusing,’ said the French knight. ‘While my adversary strove to reload from his quiver … hoopla! my Bayard ran on and crushed him into the ground! To this art I trained the beast …’

  Bayard. Strange that a horse’s name should spark a memory so apposite to the moment that it seemed inspired. Henry sat quiet. The prisoners grew restive.

  ‘My family will ransom me, English lord,’ said one to Thomas Erpingham, who stood behind the King. ‘We’re rich.’

  Henry said: ‘Later,’ and dismissed captives and escort.

  Bayard, he thought. At Nicopolis, where my father fought so long ago, the Sultan Bayard solved the problem of archers versus charging cavalry. Les chevaux de frise!

  ‘The archers will grumble,’ he said to Erpingharn with a brilliant sudden smile.

  ‘Sire?’

  ‘When each man is ordered to bear, wherever he goes, a stout stake sharpened at both ends.’

  ‘To fix in the earth like a fence before the charge?’ Erpingham too was remembering.

  ‘… thus giving each bowman time to load and reload … we’ll see what amusement the French find in that!’

  The war councillors admired the idea, but their faces remained tense. The Duke of York said: ‘We are still shadowed by a mighty host!’

  ‘We’ll march to Nesle,’ said Henry. ‘The river is fordable there. At least it was last evening when the scouts came in.’

  ‘Further east! South-east!’ Edward of York said aghast. He thought with dull disquiet of the long looping dog-leg route deeper into France. They would not see Calais this side of Christmas. Perhaps he himself would never see Calais again.

  ‘There’s no other way,’ Henry said. ‘We must outmarch d’Albret.’

  When the army moved off over the chalky terrain towards Chaulnes and Nesle, there was grumbling as he had forecast. The long staves were unwieldy. If used as an aid to walking, the sharp lower point caught in the ground and caused a stumble. Carried crosswise, eyes were endangered. So the army shouldered this extra burden and, grimly onmoving, looked like a plodding field of dragons’ teeth.

  Under threat of having their town burned, the people of Nesle were no less willing to capitulate than those at Arques and Eu. Henry’s fretful temper grew when he saw the red strips of rag hung from the windows of cottage and farm. Again! the damned oriflamme, the symbol of stubbornness with which the French upheld their crown. He was unimpressed. These were his people. He sent soldiers into the homesteads to tear the emblem down, and there he billeted men who were still sick or wounded from past skirmishes, placing a guard in each dwelling to keep the invalids from secret murder. Constantly planning with his council, he knew little of what passed within these besieged houses. The army had learned discretion. The rapes, the softer liaisons, the drinking and looting were performed in stealth. For once such details escaped Henry’s meticulous punitive mind, for he was preoccupied with acquiring the knowledge he craved.

  He was roused from bed by a deputation anxious to see the last of the English army who, by its hidden excesses, had achieved perhaps more than their King could imagine. The whiteheaded town elders handed him words sweet as summer flowers.

  ‘There are two fords north-west of here, English sires,’ said the spokesman, leaning on an ashplant.

  ‘How far?’

  The old man shrugged. ‘A day. Perhaps one and a half days. You will have to cross a swamp. There is a lower road to the ford at Béthencourt, another to Voyennes in the north. Both are unguarded.’

  ‘When the kingdom is mine,’ said Henry, ‘I will see you have your reward.’

  ‘Our reward is your departing!’ said the ancient. ‘Look for the causeway across the marsh.’ Henry was already saying to his chief offcers: ‘Rouse and ready the men to move at dawn.’

  So they went forward into shortening October, into mud and marsh and reeds. The pack-wagons took the Béthencourt road, the men-at-arms and archers made for Voyennes. Across the swampland the murky little Ingon river crawled to join the Somme. The causeway was a treacherous, crumbling, single-file plateau, and less than a mile from its end, the company was brought to a halt. The last stretch had been destroyed, leaving a vista of slime and deep pools fringed by coarse grass. It was too late to turn back or seek other crossings. Trees were felled and a row of nearby deserted cottages dismantled. Logs, doorframes, thatch, gates, and bundles of thicket were stacked to form a precarious road over which the company could reach the ford. Dawn yielded to day and then mid-day. Henry stood at the head of the causeway, and as the frantic work upon it moved, so he moved nearer the river, overseeing the repairs, giving orders, warnings. As each section grew he rode his horse on the wedged timbers, testing for safety.

  A detachment of lightly armed bowmen had gone ahead across the swamp, springing from tussock to tussock towards the ford. They waded in waist-deep, fighting the little sharp currents and clambering up the farther bank to form a bridge-head against any attack that might be threatening in the vicinity. Owen and John Page stood soaked and shivering with the others, but the little Irishmen, who wore nothing but a leather codpiece and discarded even that for the crossing, dried themselves by dancing about.

  ‘You were nimble,’ Page said to Owen. Page had slipped into the mud.

  ‘There’s a bog like that outside Glyndyfrdwy.’ The old demesne and that night of his enlistment seemed far off, like something in another childish life, with no right of application in face of this reality.

  ‘Look!’ The causeway was completed. The first horse and wagon came, urged with cries, splashing down into the river. The horse’s head was raised, its eyes rolled, the cartwheels drew a brown fan of ripples behind. A horseman followed, almost diving his mount into the water, and then another. The encouraging figure of the King could clearly be seen; he was waving the file on. It was nearly night; the army was wet, worked to exhaustion, but the Somme was gained. Mingled with the cackle of heron and the gurking of frogs, a little cheer arose, as if this fording had been a baptism of hope.

  When they lay billeted around Athies and Monchy-Lagache, an hour from the river, the word Calais had form and meaning once more. At the end of this chevauchée, they would be able to renew themselves in home territory. Sleep came easy, even through sickness and privation, for the first time in weeks. None knew that in the King’s pavilion, three French heralds knelt with solemn proclamation.

  The unseen force was already very near, north at Péronne; all the great commanders, including Marshal Boucicaut and d’Albret, who had separatel
y tracked the invasion from Rouen and now deployed their armies to sprawl across the only route to Calais. Likewise young Charles of Orléans, with his crack fighting force, and the old Duke of Berry, veteran of Poitiers; and the Duke of Bourbon. All the noble armies not already at Péronne were close enough to encircle and crush any forward movement. Only King Charles of France and the Dauphin Louis were absent. The Duke of Berry had persuaded them to stay behind. Though the puny half-dying English army posed no real threat, there were always mishaps not to be risked by the figurehead of France and his heir.

  The courteous heralds’ faces were in handsome diplomat mould. Their côtes d’armes swooned with colour. Behind them a page bore the oriflamme, windless on its staff like a skein of blood.

  ‘Right puissant and mighty prince, great and noble is thy kingly power, as is reported among our lords.’

  Civilly Henry inclined his head, while they told him they knew his intent to conquer the towns, castles and cities of the realm of France, and that for the sake of their country and their oaths, the lords were assembled to defend their rights.

  ‘They inform thee by us that before thou comest to Calais they will meet thee to fight with thee and to be revenged of thy conduct.’

  Henry caught the Duke of York’s eye. Here on the high ground outside Péronne was a fine place for battle, with the advantage his. This he had already discussed with York, with Umfraville, Cornwall, Oxford, Camoys, Gloucester and Erpingham. He said quietly:

  ‘Be all things according to the will of God. We shall take our way straight to Calais, and if our enemies try to disturb us it will not be without the utmost peril. We do not seek them out, neither shall we fear them. They shall not interrupt our journey without a great shedding of Christian blood.’

  Their mission accomplished, the heralds bowed deeply, and Henry directed: ‘Pay them for their courtesy.’ A steward presented a bag of gold coins. As the tent-flaps closed, Humphrey of Gloucester blew out his cheeks. ‘So! A battle, now?’

  ‘We wait.’ Henry rose. His eyes had a sheen of purpose. ‘For a full day and night. If they make no move, we march on to Calais.’

  Twelve hours later it began to rain heavily and continued when, at the second day’s dawning, the army moved down into the valley towards Péronne. Loose shale and small branches broken off by the torrent streamed down the hill. Feet lost hold in the greasy mud. The rainfilled wind blew into eyes and tugged at sodden clothing. A frightened packhorse bolted with its burden and fell kicking into the little river Cologne. Under the walls of Péronne there was no sight of the enemy.

  ‘They have moved back towards Bapaume.’ Erpingham was astute and grim. ‘Our position was too firm for them. They will attack our flanks, your Grace.’

  Weirdly the great army yet unseen had vanished. Citizens fired a few shots from the walls of Péronne, soon retreating as Sir Gilbert Umfraville’s party of horse raced in battle order towards the town. The army passed on to a crossroads. North-east, the fork led to Bapaume. Here the road had almost subsided and in the stew of mud, chilling to the heart, lay evidence of what faced the marchers.

  An unimaginable host had passed this way. Tens upon tens of thousands of feet and hooves had churned the road. It was like a giant ploughed field as if all the horses in the world had trodden it and all fighting men ever born had set their mark upon it. Henry ordered a contingent of flank-guards to gallop off on the Bapaume road and the army went on towards Albert along the left fork. A heavy silence fell. Then, quietly at first and with growing exhortation, the chaplains in the King’s party began to pray, while the rain poured, relentless as fear.

  The scurrier, sent forward through the advance on the orders of Edward, Duke of York, spurred his horse and it sprang strongly upwards. The steep way, more mountain than hill, rose abruptly from the Ternoise valley at Blangy. Rain fogged its summit. The rider stood in his stirrups to relieve the strong surging back beneath him. The wet wind buffeted his face and tossed his hair. He was young and bold, and his mount picked for speed and strength. Yet as the rain choked his mouth and eyes he felt urgently alone. He could almost believe that there was nothing over the summit, and that once there he would step off the world.

  They had marched fast, nearly forty miles in two days. Always westerly, doubly vigilant with the knowledge that to their right, beyond the flank-guards, the owners of those myriad prints kept course with them along the Bapaume road. Little stone villages and towns came and went; Albert, Forceville, Acheux. At Lecheux, the Comte de St Pol’s château had leered from its crag with raised drawbridge and blank arrow-slits, token that the lord and his men had joined the war. For some hours before Blangy the way had been lost; they had missed the village where the night’s billet had been planned. They had picked their tired way on to Frévent, sleeping briefly, then passing over the Ternoise bridge for a reconnaissance in the shadow of the hill.

  The horse began to labour and the bold weary young man stroked its neck. We’ll rest you soon, my boy. He planned to stand upon the ridge scanning the open country for some time, taking private ease, perhaps even closing his rain-sore eyes for a space. If he looked back he could see the little tents and insect figures of men and beasts. From his vantage point they were a small fussing knot. These moving toys were riders passing from camp to camp, that tiny waving rag the King’s standard. Very faintly he heard a trumpet call no louder than a midge’s whine; the knot began to tighten as men rode in for council, and the volume of the company diminished further within the sprawling dish of the valley.

  He reached the summit and looked out, wiping his eyes.

  Over the sheer drop before him the valley was clear as far as a small wood on the horizon, merging on the right with a dense forest, a million trees oddly luminous under the spearing rain. As he looked, the forest began to move. For a long moment his heart stopped. He closed his eyes, clenching them up tight. His pulse began again with a deathly galloping swiftness; he looked once more. His mind kept time with his pulse, gathering old pleasures for a last embrace: home, mother, father, his betrothed, a brown-eyed Kentish girl with plump breasts and a fine dowry; the archery contest won two years ago in sunshine, nights of gaming and cockfights, two sleek harriers, his saint’s-day gift. These treasures rushed on him, relived in seconds, joys never to be repeated. For what filled his eyes from the ridge surely cancelled out all future.

  The whole world glittered there, packed close yet spread out as far as man’s eye could contain the sight. A rolling illimitable column, mighty as the hosts in the Bible, a legendary terror, a gargantuan forest dense as smoke: Lance upon lance, standard upon standard, an endless row of toothed weaponry, an incalculable number of death-devices: arblasts, mangonels, bombardes, veuglaires, crapaudins, ten times as deadly as the King’s Daughter left behind at Harfleur.

  Swearing softly, corpse-cold, he wheeled his mount and plunged downwards back towards the English encampment. The horse stumbled and slipped under his goading. Faintly he heard his own moaning voice. We knew they were many, O holy blessed Virgin! We knew they were many, but not this many! Mary, Mother of Our Lord, deliver us! And let me not vomit before his Grace of York … sustain me until I have told … that the whole world waits to fight with us!

  The fine horses, great unwearied destriers, no kin to our pining starved mounts.

  The matchless armed riders, well-fed, sprung full of health, a giant race beside our sick-bellied sadness.

  The number!

  He sped sobbing down towards the Duke’s pavilion, one thought paramount.

  I must find a priest.

  Humphrey of Gloucester kissed his French paramour with rough and final zest. She had been with him, carefully concealed, throughout the whole chevauchée. She was a blonde from Provence, thrice-widowed and sometime wealthy, whose passionate enjoyment it was to follow armies.

  She did not care whose. She parted from the English lord with no regrets. She had passed a substantial degree of information to Boucicaut’s agents during the wee
ks with Humphrey. Now work and play were done.

  ‘I’ll miss you, Madame,’ he said. She smiled.

  ‘I’ll have Masses said for you when you are dead. Though doubtless you’ll be ransomed. Did you know that you and your royal brother are worth a six at dice?’

  ‘What?’ Sharply he stepped from her.

  ‘Ah, yes. Other nobles count a five, skilled men four, doctors and chaplains three and two, captains and sergeants one, but the poor archers, hélas! They’re worth a blank! Are you not glad you weren’t born an archer?’

  Appalled, he said: ‘They dice thus, for our persons?’

  The lady was gathering up her jewels and, discreetly, some of Humphrey’s into a bundle.

  ‘To my countrymen, the English archer is lower than a worm. A clown, a fool. Adieu, my lord.’

  ‘Wait until dusk,’ he said uneasily.

  On her way from the tent she walked suddenly into Owen, creeping with his guarded lantern down the line to chat with John Page. For an instant both he and she were badly frightened. She was wearing a cowled cloak; he thought she was a friar until he held up his light. Then she smiled and on tiptoe kissed him on the mouth, half mockingly, half because he was a beautiful young man soon to die. Her musky flowery perfume breathed over him. She walked rapidly away, pulling the cowl close. Stunned and delighted, Owen called softly after her—‘Hé, Madame!’ but she was already a friar again, a shadow, darkness, gone. The weirdest feeling came to him, as if the incident had happened before, perhaps in a dream, and was instantly dispelled by the next person he met—York’s scurrier, coming from the chaplain, his face still glazed with shock. He challenged Owen, drawing a blade, and when reassured went off muttering. The words blew back through the rain-dark evening.

  ‘Locusts,’ Owen repeated to John Page. ‘A innumerable horde like locusts, league on league, spreading across the Calais road, growing wider and deeper every minute. Are you listening?’

  Page stuck his quill behind his ear.

  ‘I was trying to set it down, what I’ve seen, and what I feel, and nothing comes. Now death seeks me, and fate holds me. Only prayer helps a little. And you, with your charmed life—have you made confession?’