1356 (Special Edition)

by Bernard Cornwell

  Priests moved among the waiting men. They said mass, they gave men crumbs of bread and absolution. Some men ate scraps of earth. From earth they came, to earth they would go, and eating the soil was an old superstition before battle. Men touched their talismans, they prayed to their patron saints, they made the jokes that men always made before battle. ‘Keep your visor lifted, John. Goddamned French see your face they’ll run like hares.’ They watched the wan light grow and the colour come back to a dead world. They talked of old battles. They tried to hide their nervousness. They pissed often. Their bowels felt watery. They wished they had wine or ale. Their mouths were dry. The French numbered twenty-four thousand, thirty thousand, forty thousand! They watched their commanders meet on horseback at the line’s centre. ‘It’s all right for them,’ they grumbled. ‘Who’ll kill a goddamned prince or earl? They just pay the bloody ransom and go back to their whores. We’re the goddamned bastards who have to die.’ Men thought of their wives, children, whores, mothers. Small boys carried sheaves of arrows to the archers who were concentrated at the ends of the line.

  The prince watched the western hill and saw no one there. Were the French sleeping? ‘Are we ready?’ he asked Sir Reginald Cobham.

  ‘Say the word, sire, and we go.’

  What the prince wanted to do was one of the most difficult things any commander could attempt. He wanted to escape while the enemy was close. He had heard nothing from the cardinals and he had to assume the French would attack, so his troops would need to hold them off while the baggage and the vanguard crossed the Miosson and marched away. If he could do it, if he could get his baggage across the river and then retreat, step by step, always fending off the enemy attacks, then he could steal a whole day’s march, maybe two, but the danger, the awful danger, was that the French would trap half his army on one bank and destroy it, then pursue the other half and slaughter that too. The prince must fight and retreat, fight and retreat, holding the enemy at bay with a dwindling number of men. It was a risk that made him make the sign of the cross, then he nodded to Sir Reginald Cobham. ‘Go,’ he said, ‘get the baggage moving!’ The decision was made; the dice were rolled. ‘And you, my lord,’ he turned to the Earl of Warwick, ‘your men will guard the crossing place?’

  ‘We will, sire.’

  ‘Then God be with you.’

  The earl and Sir Reginald galloped their horses south, and the prince, glorious in his royal colours and mounted on a tall black horse, followed more slowly. His handsome face was framed in steel. His helmet was ringed with gold and crested with three ostrich feathers. He paused every few yards and spoke to the waiting men. ‘We will probably fight today! And we shall do in this place what we did together at Crécy! God is on our side; Saint George watches over us! And you will stay in line! You hear that? No man will break the line! You see a naked whore in the enemy ranks you leave her there! If you break ranks the enemy will break us! Stay in line! Saint George is with us!’ Again and again he repeated the words. Stay in line. Don’t break the line. Obey your commanders! Stay together, shield to shield. Let the enemy come to us. Do not break the line!

  ‘Sire!’ A messenger galloped from the line’s centre where there was a great gap in the thick hedge. ‘The cardinal is coming!’

  ‘Meet him, find what he wants!’ the prince said, then turned back to his men. ‘You stay in line! You stay with your neighbour! You do not leave the ranks! Shield next to shield!’

  The Earl of Salisbury brought the news that the cardinal was offering a further five days of truce. ‘In five days we starve,’ the prince retorted, ‘and he knows it.’ The army had run out of food for men and horses and the presence of the enemy meant that no forage parties could search the nearby countryside. ‘He’s just doing the French king’s bidding,’ the prince said, ‘so tell him to go say his prayers and leave us alone. We’re in God’s hands now.’

  The church’s mission had failed. Archers strung their bows. The sun was almost above the horizon and the sky was filled with a great pale light. ‘Stay in line! You will not leave the ranks! Do you hear me? Stay in line!’

  Beneath the hill, beside the river where the shadows of the night still lingered, the first wagons moved towards the ford.

  Because the army would escape.

  PART FOUR

  Battle

  Fourteen

  The axles squealed like pigs being slaughtered at winter’s onset. The carts, wagons and wains, of which no two were alike, lurched on the rough track that led along the river’s northern bank. Most were piled high, though with what it was impossible to tell because rough cloth was strapped over the loads. ‘Plunder,’ Sam said, sounding disapproving.

  ‘I wonder how many monasteries, castles, and churches went to filling that big wain,’ Thomas said as he watched the first wagon roll into the ford. It was hauled by four big horses and, to his relief, the cumbersome wagon crossed the river smoothly, the water scarce reaching the two axles.

  ‘It’s not just plunder from rich folk,’ Sam said, ‘they take anything! Spits, harrows, weed-hooks, cauldrons. I wouldn’t mind if they just took from rich folk, but if it’s metal it’ll be taken.’

  A horseman wearing the Earl of Warwick’s golden lion badge spurred along the line of carts and wagons. ‘Faster!’ he shouted.

  ‘Mother of God,’ Sam said in disgust, ‘the poor bastards can’t go any quicker!’ The drivers had to turn their vehicles onto the ford and it was an awkward place for the largest wagons. ‘Slow and steady will do it.’

  Scores of women and children walked beside the wagons. They were the camp followers every army attracted. One vast wain was driven by a woman. She was vast herself with a head of unruly brown curls on which a cap perched like a diminutive bird on a big nest. Two small boys were beside her, one holding a wooden sword and the other clinging to his mother’s ample skirts. Her wagon was heaped with plunder and decorated with ribbons of every colour. She grinned at Thomas and Sam. ‘He thinks the bloody Frenchies are coming for us!’ she said, jerking her head towards the horseman. She flicked her whip at one of the lead horses and the wagon went into the ford. ‘Hup, hup!’ she called. ‘Don’t you boys get left behind!’ she called merrily to Thomas’s archers, then shook the reins so that her four horses put their weight into their collars and hauled the wagon up to the far bank.

  Some of the women and children rode in empty wagons that had carried food and fodder, all of it eaten, while other carts just carried empty barrels in which the precious arrows had been held by leather discs so that their feathers were not crushed. There were plenty of those wagons, their barrels reminding Thomas of his escape from Montpellier. ‘Keep going!’ the horseman shouted. He looked nervously over his shoulder, staring north up the rising valley that led between the English-held hill and le Champ d’Alexandre.

  Thomas looked that way and saw banners moving on the English hill. They were coming towards him, mere flickers of colour at the crest. It was the Earl of Warwick’s men, marching to guard the river. So the retreat was happening. There had been no trumpet blasts, no seven long notes to herald a truce. Instead there would be a river to cross and, Thomas assumed, a long day keeping the French from interfering with the crossing.

  ‘Don’t goddamned dally, for Christ’s sake!’ the horseman shouted. He was annoyed because a heavily laden cart had paused at the place where the track turned, and so he spurred his horse alongside the two draught horses and slapped one of their rumps with the flat of his sword. The horse panicked, half reared, but was restrained by the harness. It twisted to the right and the other horse followed and both beasts bolted and the driver hauled on the reins, but the wagon bounced on the track, the horses tried to turn away from the river and the wagon slowly tipped over the causeway’s edge. The horses screamed. There was a crash as the whole wagon fell sideways to block the ford. Plundered cauldrons clattered into the marsh. ‘Jesus!’ the panicking horseman who had caused the trouble shouted. Only two dozen wagons had crossed the Mioss
on, and at least three times that number was now baulked on the wrong bank.

  ‘Jesus!’ Sam echoed. Not because the wagon had overturned, but because there were more banners in sight. Only these flags were not on the hill. They were in the wooded valley between the hills, a valley still shrouded in shadow because the sun had not yet reached it, and beneath the trees were flags and beneath the flags were horsemen. A mass of horsemen.

  Coming to the river.

  Marshal d’Audrehem and the Lord of Douglas led the heavily armoured horsemen whose task was to shatter the archers on the left wing of the English army. They had three hundred and twenty men, all of them experienced and renowned, all of them able to afford horse armour that could resist an English arrow. The destriers wore chamfrons, metal plates over their faces with holes for their eyes, while their chests were protected by leather, mail and even plate. The armour made the big horses slow, but almost invulnerable.

  D’Audrehem and Douglas expected to attack across the valley and up the long slope towards the forest of Nouaillé, then skirt about the end of the hedge that protected and hid the enemy troops. They would walk their heavy horses across the valley, and walk up the slope, trusting to the armour to protect the great beasts. Once they had rounded the hedge they would spur the destriers into a lumbering gallop and so drive into the mass of English archers they expected to find. Maybe a thousand bowmen? And the big horses would carry them deep into that panicked mass where they would lay about with swords and axes. Destroy the archers, force them to run from the field, and then the horsemen would turn back to the French lines, dismount and take off their spurs, and then join the great attack that would fight on foot to hammer at the centre of the English army.

  That was the plan of battle: to use the heavily armoured horse to destroy the English archers, then slaughter the men-at-arms, but as d’Audrehem and Douglas had led their men over the brow of the western hill they saw the tips of English banners beyond the hedge, and those banners were moving southwards.

  ‘What are the bastards doing?’ D’Audrehem asked the question of no one.

  ‘Escaping,’ Douglas answered anyway.

  The eastern horizon was brightly lit by the rising sun and the forest was dark against that brightness, but the banners could be seen against the trees. There were a dozen flags, all of them moving southwards, and d’Audrehem looked that way and saw the glint of water in the depth of the valley. ‘Bastards are crossing the river!’ he said.

  ‘They’re running away,’ Douglas said.

  Marshal d’Audrehem hesitated. He was fifty years old and had spent almost all his adult years as a soldier. He had fought in Scotland, where he had learned to kill Englishmen, and then in Brittany, Normandy, and at Calais. He knew war. He was not hesitating because he feared what was happening, but because he knew the plan of battle must change. If they charged the far hill, aiming for where they believed the English left wing lay, they would find men-at-arms, not archers, and his mounted knights had been ordered to destroy the hated enemy bowmen. So where were the archers?

  ‘There’s a ford down there,’ a man said, pointing to the glint of water.

  ‘You know that?’

  ‘I grew up not three miles from here, sire.’

  ‘We’ll go to the ford,’ d’Audrehem decided. He turned his horse, which was caparisoned in a great cloth that bore the broad blue and white diagonal stripes of his livery. He carried a shield with the same bright colours, and his visored helmet had one white plume and one blue. ‘This way!’ he called and led the horsemen southwards.

  And this was easier than crossing the valley. Now, instead of pushing the heavy horses up the long slope of the English-held hill, they were riding downhill. They trotted. The horse armour clinked and jangled; the hooves thumped the dry turf. Some men carried lances, but most had swords. They were riding on open grassland, but ahead of them, where the valley dropped and widened into the larger valley of the Miosson, were trees, and beyond those trees d’Audrehem expected to find archers protecting the ford.

  The Lord of Douglas was on the right where a dozen of his own Scotsmen joined him. ‘Drop your visors when you see an arrow,’ he reminded them, ‘and enjoy the killing!’ He would enjoy it. The sport of the Douglas clan was killing Englishmen, and Douglas felt a fierce joy at the prospect of battle. He had dreaded that the interfering churchmen would arrange an escape for this English army, but instead the negotiations had failed and he was released to cry havoc. ‘And remember! If you see my cursed nephew then he’s to live!’ He doubted that he would find Robbie in the chaos of battle, but he still wanted the boy taken alive. Taken alive and then made to suffer. ‘I want the little bastard alive and weeping! Remember that!’

  ‘I’ll make him weep,’ Sculley answered, ‘weep like a baby!’

  Then the heavy horses were in the trees and the riders slowed as they ducked beneath heavy branches. Still no arrows. Still no enemy. Pray Christ d’Audrehem is right, Douglas thought. Were they riding into empty space? Were the English really retreating? Or were the horsemen pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp? The sound of his destrier’s hooves had changed and he realised that they were riding into a marsh. There were willows and alders instead of oak, tussocks of earth and stretches of green liquid soil instead of leaf mould. The horses were sinking their heavy feet into the bog, but they were still moving, and then he saw the river ahead, a sliver of brightness in the green gloom, and he saw men there too, men and wagons, and there were archers!

  Marshal D’Audrehem saw them too, and he saw that a wagon had overturned and that the English were in chaos, and an arrow flickered in the sky. He did not see where it went, but it told him he had made the right decision and he had found the archers. He slammed down his visor to turn his world dark, rowelled back his spurs, and charged.

  The Earl of Warwick’s archers were still streaming down from the hill. Thomas’s men faced the horsemen and, because the archers were trained and experienced, they chose flesh arrows. These were the arrows made to kill horses because horses were vulnerable and every archer knew that to defeat a charge of mounted knights a man must aim at the horses. That was how Crécy had been won, and so they instinctively picked flesh arrows that had triangular heads, barbed heads, and the two edges of each head were razor sharp, edges to tear through flesh and cut blood vessels and rip apart muscles. They drew the bows back to their ears, picked their targets, and loosed.

  The war bow was taller than a man. It was cut from the trunk of a yew grown in the sunny lands close to the Mediterranean, and it was cut where the golden sapwood met the dark-coloured heartwood, and the dark heart of the yew was stiff, it resisted bending, while the outer sapwood was springy so that it would snap back to its shape if it was bent, and the push of the compressed heartwood and the pull of the golden sapwood worked together to give the great war bow a terrible strength. Yet to release that strength the bow must be drawn to the ear, not the eye, so an archer must learn to aim by instinct, just as he had to train his muscles to pull the cord until it seemed that the stress in the yew must surely snap and break. It took ten years to make an archer, but give a trained man a war bow made of yew and he could kill at more than two hundred paces and be feared through all Christendom.

  The bows sounded. The strings slapped on the bracers that protected the archers’ wrists; the arrows leaped away. The archers aimed at the horses’ chests, aiming to drive the flesh arrows deep into labouring lungs. Thomas knew what must happen. The horses would stumble and fall. Blood would froth at their nostrils and mouths. Men would scream as dying horses rolled on them. Other men would be tripped by the fallen beasts, and still the arrows would come, relentless, savage, searing white-tipped death driven by wood and hemp, except it did not happen.

  The arrows struck. The horses kept coming.

  Men were shouting. Wagon drivers were leaping from their seats and fleeing across the river. The horseman who had tried to hurry the retreat was gaping at the approaching French in disbelief. T
he first of the Earl of Warwick’s archers were reaching the river and their ventenars were bellowing at them to start shooting.

  And the French were still coming. They were coming slowly, relentlessly, apparently unaffected by the arrows. The closest horsemen were a hundred and fifty paces away now.

  Thomas loosed a second shaft, watched the arrow fly, saw it arc low in the air to plunge dead centre into a bright trapper decorated with diagonal blue and white stripes and the horse did not miss a step, and Thomas saw other arrows were caught in the striped trapper. His arrow had gone just where he wanted, right into the horse’s chest, and it had done nothing. ‘They’ve got armour under the trappers!’ he shouted at his men. ‘Bodkins! Bodkins!’ He plucked a bodkin from the ground where he had thrust a handful of arrows into the soft turf. He drew, looked for a target, saw the red heart of Douglas on a shield, loosed.

  The horse kept coming.

  Yet the horses were coming slowly. This was not a gallop, not even a canter. The big destriers were hung with mail and plate, restricted by thick skirts of boiled leather, carrying men in full armour, and ploughing through the marsh that bordered the river. That marsh slowed them, their weight slowed them, and Thomas saw an arrow slide by a horse’s head, streak past the rider’s knee and strike the destrier’s rump and the horse sheered away from the pain. The armour was all in front!