Falstaff

by Robert Nye

  1) the fact that his father was dying by degrees, and horribly, so that the responsibilities of kingship would be soon thrust upon him;

  2) the fact that I, John Fastolf, was in some way his own father’s opposite, the father he might have liked to have, representative of a freedom he could never now enjoy, since Bolingbroke had tangled him up in the crown; I should add, in this matter of fatherhood, that it pleased Hal always to regard me as much older than I was – his Latter Spring, his Allhallown summer – whereas while I was his senior of course, this came out most truly in my superior wisdom and experience;

  3) the fact that at least one of his brothers – I mean Thomas, Duke of Clarence, my ex-employer in Ireland – was a jealous and obstinate soul, with his own followers, who sometimes didn’t bother to disguise their opinion that their man would make a better King;

  4) the fact that the duties and formalities of power already oppressed and obsessed him – that he could already feel the Crown of England tightening round his head – and there, for the moment, was I, John Fastolf, a man of the moment, a free spirit, his tutor in another kind of Englishness.

  His tutor in another kind of Englishness.

  I’ve written that out again since I suspect it is the key to the contradictions. Whatever Harry Monmouth learnt from me was not ill-used at Agincourt.

  For Englishness, madam – if you happen to be an Ethiopian – read Human Nature. It is our English pride or penitence (notice I do not say prejudice) to imagine that we have as much of this commodity as any tribe now going.

  Well, there was Hal, busy at his Prodigal Sonship, and making a surrogate father of one of the pigs, you may say.

  I don’t mind you saying it. I like pigs. Give me a pig any day, in front of a prig. Jupiter was suckled by a sow. Watch your pigs closely. They will teach you to turn up the earth.

  To return to our strategy for the Battle of Gadshill, however … I hope I have made it clear to the unbiased reader, and to Clio, that for my part this expedition was undertaken in jest, and to please my Prince. You can imagine my surprise, then, when the same Prince turned abrupt about-face as soon as the plan was seriously mooted, and I began to draw lines of battle in the spilt wine on the tabletop.

  ‘Hal,’ I said, ‘you will be here’ – stabbing with my finger at my wine-map – ‘We can wear masks, or better still, friars’ hoods—’

  The royal boots swung off the scribbled table. ‘I rob?’ said the Prince. ‘I a thief? Not I.’

  ‘Manhood,’ I muttered.

  That got him, or so at first it seemed. ‘Well then,’ he said grudgingly, ‘once in my days I’ll be a madcap.’

  ‘Well said!’

  But the Prince was about his own sly tricks with me again, for no sooner had I praised him, even ironically (once in my days indeed!), than he stood up to dismiss me with an airy wave of his goblet. ‘Come what will,’ he said, ‘I’m staying at home.’

  I perceived in this shuttlecock that he was playing with me as he played with his father the King. Here was a situation in which I had taken the trouble to draw up perfectly good plans for a robbery as safe as you please, purely for his entertainment, and now he was dismissing all my effort, giving me the back of his hand, and declaring he’d take no part.

  ‘By the Lord, then,’ I grunted, ‘I’ll be a traitor when you are King.’ (For this was a kind of treason he offered to me.)

  ‘Who cares?’ said Hal.

  He was flinging my plans back at me like a child with a lot of toy bricks. I turned aside. Poins caught at my sleeve with a perfumed hand. ‘Fastolf,’ he whispered, winking, ‘leave the Prince and me alone. I’ll see that he comes to Gadshill tomorrow.’

  ‘By four o’clock,’ I said, not caring for his wink.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘In the morning,’ I said, removing his hand from my sleeve.

  ‘Trust me.’

  Like a snake. But I left them to it.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  How the Battle of Gadshill was won: 1st version

  2nd July

  Moonlight. Thin trees. Gadshill.

  Four o’clock in the morning.

  I had at my command a company of three – Bardolph, Peto, and Gadshill. (Mr Gadshill, that is, and not to be confused with our battleground. You may call him Cuthbert Cutter, if you wish.)

  We were masked.

  The enemy were carrying £200 (Two Hundred Pounds) in gold. One of them was an official of the Exchequer. They had breakfasted on eggs and butter at Rochester.

  Prince Hal and Mr Poins were performing an extra-military exercise called walking lower. That is, they had run away, and left the work to us.

  We confronted the enemy in a narrow lane. There were eight or ten of them.

  ‘Stand!’ I cried.

  ‘Stand!’ cried Bardolph.

  ‘Stand!’ cried Peto.

  ‘Stand!’ cried Mr Gadshill and/or Cuthbert Cutter.

  ‘Jesus bless us!’ cried the enemy eight or ten times.

  ‘Strike!’ I cried.

  ‘Down with them!’ cried Bardolph.

  ‘Gut the villains’ throats!’ cried Peto.

  ‘Ah whoreson caterpillars!’ cried Mr Gadshill, who in his Cuthbert Cutter moods possessed quite a poetical turn. ‘Bacon-fed knaves!’ he added. (There was a smell of grocers’ shops about them.)

  ‘We are undone,’ cried the enemy.

  ‘They hate us youth!’ I noticed.

  ‘Down with them!’ cried Bardolph, who was always repeating himself.

  ‘Fleece them!’ suggested Peto.

  ‘O,’ cried the enemy.

  ‘Young men must live,’ I remarked.

  We tied them up and took their money.

  No sooner had we done so, than our gallant band was set upon by a hundred men.

  ‘Your money!’ they shouted. And, ‘Villains!’ they shouted.

  It was altogether a most unpleasant experience. I fought with a dozen of them for two hours. I escaped by a miracle, eight times thrust through the doublet, four times through the hose, my buckler bent through and through, my sword hacked like a handsaw. Two men – in buckram suits – I killed. But it was to no avail. We were hopelessly outnumbered. We retreated in good order.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  How the Battle of Gadshill was won: 2nd version

  3rd July

  Moonlight. Thin trees. Gadshill.

  Four o’clock in the morning.

  I had at my command a company of three – Bardolph, Peto, and Gadshill. (Alias Cuthbert Cutter.)

  We were masked.

  The enemy were carrying £1000 (One Thousand Pounds) in gold. One of them was a freeholder from Kent. They had breakfasted at an inn in Rochester on eggs and butter.

  Prince Hal and Mr Poins had run away like cowards. At this critical juncture in the history of England, Mr Poins had also seen fit to remove my horse. He had tied that noble beast I know not where. I do not bitch, but I believe King Arthur and St George and even Timur the Lame were not required to cope with horse-thieves in their own party.

  We accosted the enemy in the narrow lane. There were twelve or sixteen of them.

  ‘Stand!’ we cried. Four times.

  ‘Jesus bless us!’ cried the enemy. Twelve or sixteen times.

  ‘Strike!’ I cried.

  ‘Down with them!’ cried Bardolph.

  ‘Cut the villains’ throats!’ cried Peto. And so on.

  ‘We are undone,’ cried the enemy.

  ‘They hate us youth!’ I noticed. ‘Young men must live!’ I remarked.

  We tied up every man of them. Peto avers that four of us could not have tied up sixteen men, but I am as expert in knots as Alexander, and I am a Jew if they weren’t all tied up.

  Then, as we were sharing the money, some six or seven fresh men set upon us, and unbound the sixteen, and came at us with the hundred.

  I fought with fifty of them. Or I am a bunch of radish.

  I never fought better in my life.<
br />
  If I didn’t fight with fifty-three of them then I’m no two-legged creature.

  I peppered two of them.

  I put paid to two of them – two rogues in buckram suits.

  But to no avail. All would not do.

  If I tell you a lie, spit in my face!

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  How the Battle of Gadshill was won: 3rd version

  4th July

  Here I stood, and thus I held my sword. Four rogues in buckram suits let drive at me—

  No, reader, I did not tell you two. I said four, all abreast.

  I took their seven points on my shield.

  Seven? you say, sir. But there were only four just now …

  In buckram. Seven, or I’m a villain.

  You think I will have more in this story in a minute?

  These nine in buckram that I told you of –

  So, you say, two more already –

  Wait, just wait, madam, all will be clear as the moon over Gadshill in a moment … These nine, giving me ground, coming in foot and hand – I put paid to seven out of the eleven of them!

  Right, Worcester! I heard that! But you mutter no more than the Common Reader might …

  Eleven buckram men grown out of two!

  Notice all this

  BUCKRAM.

  Then, as the Devil would have it, three misbegotten knaves in Kendal green came at my back and let drive at me – for it was so dark that you could not see your hand!

  BUCK BUCK BUCK!

  You get my drift now, Worcester my son?

  2, 4, 7, 9, 11.

  And the three in Kendal green.

  But essentially this BUCKRAM.

  No?

  Never mind. I will analyse and explicate tomorrow. I will demonstrate also why for these three days I have spoken of the winning of the Battle of Gadshill. This engagement constitutes (in fact) one of the subtlest (if misunderstood) manoeuvres of my military career – and I shall be glad to explain it for the benefit of those who have discovered in it nothing but defeat and chaos and confusion.

  But not right now. I’ve wearied myself in fighting those BUCKRAM MEN again, all over and over.

  It’s just my wound talking now.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Sir John Fastolf’s review of the action, strategy, & tactics of the Battle of Gadshill

  5th July

  Reader, truth is various. And there is nothing more various than the truth about a battle. Men coming and going in the dark, fighting and falling, your foe turning into your friend, your friends running away … Only historians say otherwise. Never believe historians. Historians say what they are paid to say, or what they pay themselves to believe, which amounts to the same economy of lies. If you want to come at the truth of a single event you had better allow for at least three stabs at it, and then allow for the fact that you may still have missed the heart in some way. That is why I have given you three versions of how the Battle of Gadshill was won. I do not claim that any single one of them is true. But I do claim that if you add the three together, and look at them closely, you will see what I have been driving at all along, and why I speak of this engagement as a victory.

  To dispense first with the inessentials. What does it matter whether the enemy carried £200 (Two Hundred Pounds) or £1000 (One Thousand Pounds)? Booty is booty. And, besides, all this booty ended up where I intended it to end up. It is not for me to say how much it amounted to when he came to count it …

  Were there 8, 10, 12, or 16 in the original enemy force? It was four o’clock in the morning. The encounter was in a narrow lane of thin trees on a hillside. You could not see so well as you might at noon from the spire of St Paul’s. Some of the travellers might have been trees. There were travellers. One of them was an official of the Exchequer, and another was certainly a freeholder from Kent. Mr Gadshill had established this (and precisely what they had eaten for breakfast) by a spot of judicious spy-work in their inn at Rochester. As for the other details, I suggest that they matter as little as whether you choose to think of Mr Gadshill in that personality or as Cuthbert Cutter. It might be better, on the whole, if you fix it firmly in your head that he figured as Cuthbert Cutter (just to avoid confusion with the battleground). It would be as well if you would allow that we overpowered those travellers easily enough – Bardolph and Peto and Cutter and I – though without doing them any of the unnecessary violence (throat-cutting, hair-cutting etc.) recommended by Peto, whose mouth was always bigger than his brain.

  Well then, now then, hey diddle dan, we come to the military crunch.

  The second engagement.

  The attack on my gallant band by the two men in buckram suits, with masked faces.

  Worcester, my writer, and you, my reader, how long is it since you wore buckram? Buckram is not cheap. Buckram makes expensive suits. Did you suppose for one minute that I did not immediately guess the identity of those two men in buckram suits?

  By the Lord, I swear it, and by the Pope’s belly, I recognised Hal and Poins from the very start! They had gone slinking off like cowards to do their walking lower. I smelt a rat. The rat was Poins. How else had he persuaded Hal to come to the robbery at Gadshill than by promising him some practical joke at Jack Fastolf’s expense? To tell you the truth, I had been anticipating some such turn-about all night long. And when Poins disappeared with my horse, and the Prince made excuses for joining him, it was in the back of my head all through the fight with the travellers that there was some nonsense to come.

  It came. It came in buckram suits.

  BUCKRAM!

  Worcester, I have pondered this for years. It is my conclusion that this wearing of buckram must have been Poins’ idea. In the first place, buckram is kinky, and your queer boys love it. In the second place, buckram is uncommon, and would give me some warning that inhabitants of suits fashioned out of it might be no ordinary offal for my sword. In the third place, which is the sum of the first two places, they were somewhat banking, the Prince and his mannikin, on the fact that their Fastolf was not a fool, and that he would

  a) recognise them;

  b) refrain from killing them;

  c) leave them the loot, and retreat in good order.

  And all these things came to pass.

  Madam, I heard your mind. That was unworthy of your face, dear. Do not think of ‘lies’ (even with commas round them) or ‘subterfuges’ (ditto). Look again at my third version of the glorious Battle of Gadshill. (Glorious, sir, on account of its subtlety, which was extreme as anything in Pythagoras, and makes Timur the Lame look like a butter fingers.) Notice how in that third version, while conveying deliberate doubt as to how many men there were attacking us in buckram suits, I mention also cheap thieves in Kendal green – and then in the same breath I tell you that it was so dark at that point you could not see your own hand!

  Worcester is smiling. His one eye lights up. He has it!

  You too, sir? I congratulate you. You would make a diplomat, if never a general.

  Madam, don’t throw my book down in disgust at your own lack of understanding. These are men’s matters. I will spell them out for your benefit.

  It was my object all along to make the Prince of Wales believe himself to be a much finer fellow than he was. I flattered him by turning him into 4, 7, 9, 11 men in buckram suits. (Or 3½, 6½, 8½, 10½, if we allow Edward Poins to count as half a man, which in our magnanimity we might.) But, then, in conversation with the Prince himself, I had eventually not only to flatter him with the success of his expedition against me but to put an end to the joke without him losing face. Hence, the green I claimed to observe in pitch darkness. In other words, madam, by this signal to my Prince, I deliberately lied.

  Fr Brackley has heard the tale a hundred times, and has come to the conclusion that my sin was venial. I committed it for Harry Monmouth’s benefit, and for England’s. If Hal had been defeated at the Battle of Gadshill, what would have happened at Agincourt?

  Was it for me
to kill the heir-apparent?

  Was it for me to destroy the lad’s confidence?

  Of course not. And I ran the faster away (in good order) the better not to kill him, or to tamper with his confidence. For, as you know, madam, I am a man of instinct, and here I was, a lion, in the presence of a true prince. Pliny used to teach that the lion, being the king of beasts, will not touch a true prince, respecting this other kingship. Edward III dared Philip of Valois to go into a lions’ den to prove his kingliness.

  The greatest glory of Gadshill, then, was that it proved Prince Hal a true prince to himself, and that it taught him a thing or two about lions and Jack Fastolf.

  I could have killed that Poins, though.