1356 (Special Edition)

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘Which doesn’t make it a good thing,’ Sir Reginald said. He had summoned Thomas with a curt, ‘You’ll do. Get on your horse and bring a half-dozen archers,’ then led him to the southernmost end of the English line where the Earl of Warwick’s banner stirred in the light breeze. Sir Reginald kept going, leading Thomas and his archers down the steep hill into the marshy valley of the Miosson. The English baggage train, a mass of carts and wagons, was parked under the trees. ‘They could cross the river by the bridge,’ Sir Reginald explained, gesturing east towards the monastery that was hidden by the big trees growing in the lush land about the river, ‘but the village streets are narrow and you can wager your last penny that some bloody idiot will break a wagon wheel on a house corner. It will be quicker if they can get across the ford here. So that’s what we’re doing. Seeing if the ford is passable.’

  ‘Because we’re retreating?’

  ‘The prince would like that. He’d like to get over the river and head south as fast as we can. He’d like us to sprout wings and fly to Bordeaux.’ Sir Reginald stopped close to the river where he turned and looked at Thomas’s six archers. ‘All right, boys, just stay here. If any bastard Frenchman comes near just sing out. Don’t shoot. Just sing out, but make sure your bows are strung.’

  A raised track curved through the marsh. The causeway was firm and rutted, showing that carts used the track, which dipped into the ford where both horses stopped to drink. Sir Reginald let his horse slake its thirst, then spurred into the river’s centre. ‘Splash about,’ he told Thomas. He was letting the horses feel the river bottom, looking for a treacherous dip or a marshy place that could trap a wagon, but the horses found firm footing all the way across.

  ‘Sir!’ Sam shouted, and Sir Reginald twisted in the saddle.

  A dozen horsemen were watching from the trees halfway down the western hill. They were in mail and helmets. Three wore jupons, though they were too far away for Thomas to see what badge they bore. One carried a small banner, red against the green and yellow of the trees.

  ‘Le Champ d’Alexandre,’ Sir Reginald said and, when Thomas looked at him quizzically, he pointed to the flat-topped western hill. ‘That’s what the local folk call it, Alexander’s Field, and my guess is that those bastards are exploring the whole damned hill.’ The Frenchmen, they had to be French if they were on that western slope, were well out of bowshot. Thomas wondered if they had even seen the archers, who were in the shadow of the willows growing close to the ford. ‘I didn’t want to bring a score of men,’ Sir Reginald said, ‘because I don’t want the bastards to think we’re interested in the ford. And I certainly don’t want the goddam bastards to see our wagons.’ Those wagons were parked on the Miosson’s northern bank, hidden from le Champ d’Alexandre by trees and by the high shoulder of the hill on which the forest of Nouaillé grew and where the prince had formed his line of battle. Sir Reginald frowned as he watched the Frenchmen who, in turn, gazed back at the two horsemen in the river. ‘It might be a truce,’ Sir Reginald went on, ‘but they still could be tempted by us.’

  The Frenchmen were indeed tempted. Their job was to probe the English position and, as far as they could see, the two horsemen were a long way from the rest of the prince’s troops and so they spurred forward, not charging, just coming slowly and deliberately towards the river. ‘They want to have a chat with us,’ Sir Reginald said sourly. ‘How good are your archers?’

  ‘As good as any.’

  ‘Boys! Have some target practice! Kill some trees, all right? Don’t aim at the men or horses, just frighten the bastards away.’

  The French had divided into two files, which were now coming faster down the hill, picking their way through the thick trees as the riders ducked under branches. Sam shot the first arrow. The fledging flickered white against the leaves, then buried itself in the trunk of an oak. Five more arrows followed. One struck a branch and tumbled, the others slammed hard into bark, and the closest was no more than two paces from a French horseman.

  Who abruptly curbed his horse.

  ‘Another shot each!’ Sir Reginald called. ‘Just a few paces short of them, boys. Let them know you’re here and you’re hungry!’

  The bows shot again, the arrows flew to thud into trees with appalling force and the Frenchmen turned away. One waved genially towards Sir Reginald, who waved back. ‘Thank God for archers,’ he said. He watched the Frenchmen push back up the hill until they were out of sight.

  ‘Sam,’ Thomas called, ‘fetch the arrows back.’ He had resupplied his men with arrows from the prince’s baggage train, but there were never enough.

  ‘I want you to stay here,’ Sir Reginald said. ‘All night. I’ll send the rest of your men down to join you. Do you have a trumpeter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll send one. Stay here, and sound the alarm if the French come back in force. But keep them away if they do come. If they see the wagons close to the ford they’ll guess what we’re doing.’

  ‘Retreating?’ Thomas asked.

  Sir Reginald shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ He frowned and gazed blankly northwards as if trying to gauge what the enemy might do. ‘The prince thinks we should keep marching. He’s given orders that tomorrow morning, first thing, we cross the river and march south as if the devil himself was at our heels. A French attack would stop that, of course, but my guess is they won’t attack at first light. They’ll need at least two hours to draw their army up, and I want the wagons gone before they even know we were here, and then the rest of the army can slip over the river and steal a day’s march.’ He kicked his horse out of the ford, back onto the track that crossed the marsh. ‘But who knows what those goddamned churchmen are proposing? If we could have joined Lancaster …’ He let that thought trail away.

  ‘Lancaster?’

  ‘The idea was to join the Earl of Lancaster and make havoc in northern France, but we couldn’t cross the Loire. And nothing’s gone right since then, and now we’re trying to get back to Gascony without the bloody French killing us. So stay here till dawn!’

  To help an army escape.

  The Captal de Buch took twenty men-at-arms northwards. They rode past the Earl of Salisbury’s men who guarded the northern end of the ridge. Most of the earl’s men were arrayed beyond the northern end of the protective hedge and so his archers were busy digging and disguising pits to break the legs of charging horses. A bowman guided the captal and his men past the pits, and once past the traps the captal could look back and see the cardinals and churchmen who were attempting to forge a peace. They and the French negotiators had met the English emissaries in the open fields, just beneath the vineyard. Someone had brought benches to the place and the men were sitting and talking, while heralds and men-at-arms waited a few paces away. There was no tent or awning. A single banner was planted behind the churchmen. It showed the crossed keys of Saint Peter, a sign that a Papal Legate was present.

  ‘What are they talking about?’ one of the captal’s men asked.

  ‘They’re trying to delay us,’ the captal said, ‘they want to keep us here. They want us to starve.’

  ‘I hear the Pope sent them. Maybe they want peace?

  ‘The Pope shits French turds,’ the captal said curtly, ‘and the only peace he wants is to see us in his chamber pot.’ He turned away and led his Gascons down the long slope that dropped gently to the north. They were heading into a tangled landscape of woods, vineyards, hedges, and hills, and somewhere in that tangle was a French army, but no one was quite certain where it was or how big it was. It was certainly close. The captal could tell it was close because the smoke of French cooking fires was thick on the northern skyline, but the prince had asked him to try to discover just where the enemy was camped and how many they were, and so he spurred down the slope, keeping now in the shelter of the trees. Neither he nor his men were mounted on their great destriers, the trained war horses that went into battle, but on coursers, fast light horses that could speed them out of trouble. T
he men wore mail, but not plate, and had helmets and swords, but no shields. They were Gascons and that meant they were accustomed to perpetual war, to countering French raids or making raids themselves. They rode in silence. There was a cart track to their left, but they stayed away from it, keeping hidden. They slowed when they reached the foot of the slope, for now they were well beyond English bowshot and if the French had posted sentinels then they could be anywhere among these trees.

  The captal gestured to spread his men out, then gestured again to signal them forward. They went very slowly, searching the woods ahead for a movement that might betray a hidden crossbowman. They saw nothing. They were climbing through thick woods, and still there was no sign of the enemy. The captal stopped. Was he being lured into a trap? He waved a hand indicating that his men should wait where they were, and he swung out of the saddle and went alone on foot. The slope was not steep and he could see the crest not far ahead. Surely that was a place to put sentinels? He was moving quietly, furtively, watching for the flight of a bird, but for all his caution he sensed he was alone. He watched the skyline for a moment, then moved on up to the crest and suddenly he could see far to the north and west.

  He crouched.

  The main French encampment was only half a mile away, the tents clustered about a village and a manor, but what interested him was the sight of men going west. They would be invisible to the English on their hill, but the captal could see that the French forces were being led around to the west and south, curling closer to the river. They were not in battle order, indeed they were in no order that he could see, but they were undeniably moving westwards. It looked to him as if they were going to the flat-topped hill, to le Champ d’Alexandre. He could not count them, they were too many and there was too much dead ground. Eighty-seven banners, he remembered.

  He backed away, stood, and went to his horse. He mounted, turned and waved his men southwards again. They rode fast now, sure that no enemy was within sight or earshot, and the captal wondered if the French would keep the truce.

  But of two things he was sure. The enemy were readying to attack, and the attack would come from the west.

  The Earls of Warwick and Suffolk came back to the prince’s tent in the late afternoon. They sat wearily when the prince offered them chairs, then drank the wine that his servant brought. All the prince’s advisers were there, all waiting for the results of the long negotiations to be announced.

  ‘The terms are these, sire,’ the Earl of Warwick spoke flatly. ‘We must return all the land, fortresses and towns captured in the last three years. We must yield all the plunder in our baggage train. We must release all prisoners held here or in England without further payment of ransom. And we are to pay France an indemnity of sixty-six thousand pounds to compensate for the destruction we have wrought over the years.’

  ‘Dear God,’ the prince said faintly.

  ‘In return, sire,’ the Earl of Oxford took up the tale, ‘your army will be permitted to march to Gascony, the King of France will betroth one of his daughters to you, and she will bring you the County of Angoulême as her dowry.’

  ‘Are his daughters pretty?’ the prince asked.

  ‘Prettier than a hill covered in English corpses, sire,’ the Earl of Warwick said sharply. ‘There is more. You and all England must swear not to take up arms against France for a period of seven years.’

  The prince looked from one earl to the other, then to the captal, who sat to one side of the tent. ‘Advise me,’ he said.

  The Earl of Warwick flinched as he stretched his legs out. ‘We’re outnumbered, sire. Sir Reginald believes we can slip away in the dawn, cross the river and be on our way before the enemy notices, but I confess I’m sceptical. The bastards aren’t fools. They’ll be watching us.’

  ‘And they’re moving south and west, sire,’ the captal put in. ‘They must be thinking we’ll try to cross the Miosson and they’re trying to close that escape.’

  ‘And they’re confident, sire,’ the Earl of Oxford said.

  ‘Because of numbers?’

  ‘Because our men are tired, outnumbered, hungry and thirsty. And the fat cardinal said something strange. He warned us that God has sent France a sign that He is on their side. I asked him what he meant, but the fat bastard just looked smug.’

  ‘I thought the cardinals spoke for the Pope?’

  ‘The Pope,’ Warwick said dourly, ‘is in France’s grip.’

  ‘And if we fight tomorrow?’ the prince asked.

  There was silence. Then the Earl of Warwick shrugged and used his hands to imitate a weighing scale. Up and down. The thing could end either way, his hands were suggesting, but his face showed nothing but pessimism.

  ‘We hold a strong position,’ the Earl of Salisbury, who commanded the troops at the northern end of the English hill, said, ‘but if the line breaks? We’ve made pits and trenches that will stop them, but we can’t entrench the whole damned hill. And it’s my belief they have at least twice our numbers.’

  ‘And they’re eating well today,’ the captal said, ‘while our men make acorn stew.’

  ‘The terms are harsh,’ the prince said. A horsefly landed on his leg and he slapped at it angrily.

  ‘And they demand noble hostages, sire, as a surety that the terms are honoured,’ the Earl of Oxford said.

  ‘Noble hostages,’ the prince said flatly.

  ‘Noble and knightly, sire,’ the earl said, ‘which includes everyone in this tent, I fear.’ He took a piece of parchment from a pouch on his sword belt and held it towards the prince. ‘That’s a partial list, sire, but they will undoubtedly add other names.’

  The prince nodded and a servant took the list and went on one knee to give it to his master. The prince grimaced as he read the names. ‘All our best knights?’

  ‘Including Your Royal Majesty,’ Oxford said.

  ‘So I see,’ the prince said. He frowned as he read the names. ‘Sire Roland de Verrec? Surely he’s not in our army?’

  ‘It seems he is, sire.’

  ‘And a Douglas? Are they mad?’

  ‘Sir Robert Douglas is also here, sire.’

  ‘He is? Christ’s bowels, what’s a Douglas doing with us? And who in God’s name is Thomas Hookton?’

  ‘Sir Thomas, sire,’ Sir Reginald spoke for the first time. ‘He was one of Will Skeat’s men at Crécy.’

  ‘An archer?’

  ‘Now a vassal of Northampton, sire. A useful man.’

  ‘Why in Christ’s name is Billy knighting archers?’ the prince asked petulantly. ‘And why in hell’s name do the French know he’s here and I don’t?’

  No one answered. The prince let the parchment drop onto the carpet that covered the turf. What would his father think? What would his father do? But Edward the Third, the most feared warrior-king in Europe, was in faraway England. So this was the prince’s decision. True, he had advisers and he was wise enough to listen to them, but in the end the decision was his alone. He stood and walked to the tent door and stared past the banners, through the trees to where the light was fading in the west. ‘The terms are harsh,’ he said again, ‘but defeat will be harsher.’ He turned and looked at the Earl of Warwick. ‘Beat them down, my lord. Offer half of what they demand.’

  ‘It’s hardly a demand, sire, but a suggestion from the cardinals. The French must accept the terms too.’

  ‘Of course they’ll accept them,’ the prince said, ‘they dictated them! Even half of what they want means victory for them! Christ! They win everything!’

  ‘And if the French won’t accept lesser terms, sire? What then?’

  The prince sighed. ‘It’s better to be a hostage in Paris than a corpse in Poitiers,’ he suggested, then flinched as he thought again of the French demands. ‘It’s a surrender, really, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, sire,’ the Earl of Warwick said firmly. ‘It’s a truce and an arrangement.’ He frowned, trying to find some good news amid the bad. ‘The army will be allowed to march on to
Gascony, sire. No prisoners will be demanded.’

  ‘And hostages are not prisoners?’ the Earl of Salisbury asked.

  ‘Hostages pay no ransom. We’ll be treated honourably.’

  ‘You can drape it in velvet,’ the prince said unhappily, ‘and drench it in perfume, but it’s still a surrender.’ But he and his army were trapped. Call it a truce, an arrangement, or a treaty, he knew it was really a surrender. Yet he had no other choice. So far as he could see it was surrender or be slaughtered.

  Because the English were beaten.

  The Hellequin guarded the ford. The Sire Roland de Verrec and Robbie Douglas had stayed on the hill with the rest of the Earl of Warwick’s men-at-arms, but the remainder of Thomas’s men were camped just south of the river. A cordon of archers was on the northern bank, and Keane was there with his wolfhounds. ‘They’ll howl if they smell men or horses,’ he said.

  ‘No fires,’ Thomas had ordered. They could see the glow of the English and Gascon campfires on the hill, and a greater glow stretching around the northern and western horizon that marked where the French army was spending the night, but Thomas would have no fires. Sir Reginald did not want to draw the enemy’s attention to the crossing over the Miosson, and so the men-at-arms and archers shivered in the cold autumn darkness. Clouds smothered the moon, though there were gaps through which bright stars showed. An owl called and Thomas made the sign of the cross.

  Some time in the night and somewhere in that darkness hooves sounded. The wolfhounds stood and growled, but then a voice called softly, ‘Sir Thomas! Sir Thomas!’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus, it’s dark.’ It was Sir Reginald who appeared out of the blackness and eased himself out of his saddle. ‘Good man, no fires. Any visitors?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘But we reckon they’ve moved men onto that hill.’ He gestured towards the dark loom of le Champ d’Alexandre. ‘Damn it, they must know the ford’s here; they must have realised we’ll try to escape. Except we might not.’