Falstaff

by Robert Nye

  Which left the last third of that third line.

  Under whose command? I don’t know. But I do know that just as Alençon had decided that if he could kill the King then maybe the day might be retrieved for France, so whoever directed this last remaining segment of the French army evidently realised that if he could kill ME then perhaps the tide would turn their way.

  The notion was not so preposterous. Being so large, I suppose I appeared the most ransomable or murderable Englishman in sight. And, besides, I was in charge of the baggage, and the baggage contained the King’s crown. (He didn’t wear the actual thing to fight in, madam. He left it to me to look after. The sliced one on his head was second best.)

  What remained of the third line of cavalry, therefore, craftily rode right round the outside of the woods of Tramecourt, and came thundering at me full-tilt just as the day seemed in our grasp!

  DO? What do you think I did?

  I baggaged them!

  I stood alone, with that heap of spare hauberks and helmets and jaques and gauntlets and metal plate and lances and battle axes and iron darts and several hundred bags of jewels. And as those six, or twelve, or eighteen French fry came rushing at me, I advanced my belly forward, with a mighty belch of old –

  ‘Fastolf! Faust off! Faust off! FASTOLF!’

  – and I pelted them with

  hauberks and

  helmets and

  gauntlets and

  metal plates and

  lances and

  battle axes and

  iron darts and

  SEVERAL HUNDRED BAGS OF JEWELS!

  The effect was tremendous. In a trice, they were all off their horses and scrabbling for the jewels in the grass. It was then an easy matter for me to spike them up the bum as they were bending, or knock their heads together, or generally boot them into Kingdom Come.

  Unfortunately, it was this singular engagement which provoked Hal to the assumption that a whole new enemy host had appeared behind him, where it was engaged in competition with a small party of our men. The general safety of the army seemed in that case to require immediate and decisive action, for if the enemy host succeeded in fighting its way to the French prisoners we had taken, those noblemen might yet effect some retrieval of the day.

  Accordingly, the King issued orders that all the prisoners were to be killed. An order which was carried out without enthusiasm. A cut throat meant no ransom money.

  But when Henry heard who had been in command of this rearguard English action, and who had comprised the entire company which had taken part in it, and won, and how, he stopped the slaughter of the prisoners, and then I believe he smiled the only smile which was ever smiled upon the field of Agincourt.

  The day was done. It had taken three hours.

  The victory was England’s.

  The French losses were enormous. Their dead included, besides Alençon, two brothers of the Duke of Burgundy, the Dukes of Brabant, Bar, and Charles d’Albret, the Constable of France. Also the Great Master of France, Sir Guichard Dolphin; the master of the crossbows, Lord Rambures; and the lords Grandpré, Roussi, Foix, Beaumont, Marie, Vaudemont, and Lestrale. I mention only the most illustrious. Their own chroniclers – who are inclined to underestimate such things, of course – put the number of noblemen dead at no less than ten thousand. We took as prisoners the Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, both princes of the blood-royal. As well as the Earls of Richemont, Vendôme, and Eu, with the Lord Boucicault, and a few thousand others. No one counted the common dead, of course.

  As to our own dead: there were nine. Our principal loss was the Duke of York, who was crushed to death in the shambles, and the young Michael de la Pole, the Earl of Suffolk. Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, was badly wounded, but recovered, thanks to Morstede the surgeon. Besides the nobles, we lost one squire, four men-at-arms, and twenty-eight common soldiers.

  The last figure – that twenty-eight common soldiers – is absolutely reliable.

  I counted them myself that afternoon. (After retrieving every one of the King’s jewels, of course, and packing them back in the baggage.)

  Twenty-eight.

  Morbid of me?

  No, sir. I was looking for honour.

  I knew he would be there.

  Among that twenty-eight.

  I found him too, madam.

  His name was Mr Gam.

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  How the King came back in triumph to London

  17th September

  And when we landed at Dover, the people rushed into the sea to welcome us. Especially the women.

  It was always like this after a great battle. Mars and Venus seem to tickle each other up, as I’ve noted before.

  Not that Hal took any hot girls to his bed. He was saving the royal sperm for Katharine of Valois, youngest daughter of the mad French King, at that time fifteen years old and busy learning English from her mother. Katharine was said to be very beautiful. I hope that English was all the French Queen taught her. Ysabeau, since her husband’s madness, had lived a life of extraordinary scandal even by French standards. She kept a whole retinue of lovers, as well as a pet monkey which she liked to masturbate in public while conducting boring affairs of state.

  There was nothing like that about our Henry now. After resting for one day at Dover, he made his way slowly up with us via Canterbury to his manor of Eltham. He sent heralds to announce that he intended to enter London on the Saturday following. Elaborate preparations were made to receive us conquerors.

  We were met at Blackheath by the Mayor of London, with twenty-three aldermen in scarlet, and the rest in red with red and white hoods. These came at the head of a procession of (I should suppose) about twenty thousand people, all on horseback, and bearing the insignia of the various guilds and crafts they represented.

  We crossed London Bridge at ten o’clock in the morning.

  And all the bells of London rang for us.

  And on the tower at the entrance to the Bridge I saw that they had set up a great statue. This statue, in the shape of a champion, bore an axe in his right hand and the keys of the City in his left. And on the other side of the arch stood a statue of a woman dressed in scarlet. And all around were the royal banners.

  The trumpets and the clarions sounded.

  CIVITAS REGIS JUSTITIAE was written on a banner right across between the statues.

  And every tower of the Bridge had been painted or emblazoned in some way to celebrate our victory at Agincourt. Thus, one little tower was painted to look like green and marble jasper. And on the next was an antelope with the royal sceptre in his right foot, and the arms of England round his neck. And on the next a lion erect, bearing in his claws the King’s standard unfurled. And on the next a statue of St George with a laurel wreath studded with pearls, and on his right hand hung his helmet, and on his left his shield.

  And as we marched over the Bridge, the people leant down and showered us with rose petals out of the windows of the many houses on the Bridge. And we were suddenly met by a great number of boys all dressed in white, who walked all round the King, singing to the sound of organs from the thrown-open doors of the chapels and churches around and on the Bridge. And what they sang was that greatest of English canticles, the Agincourt song:

  Deo gratias Anglia redde pro victoria!

  Our King went forth to Normandy,

  With grace and might of chivalry;

  The God for him wrought marvellously,

  Wherefore England may call and cry,

  DEO GRATIAS!

  and so on. All six verses of it. Which never fail to bring a lump into my throat and tears to my eyes. Complicated tears, you understand. Since when I hear that song I see Bardolph hanging on his tree also, and David Gam face-down in the Agincourt mud, his brains in his cap beside him – as well as the more obvious things.

  I marched at the back of the procession, which by now was so long, what with our army, and the choir, and the aldermen, and the guildsmen, and the priso
ners-of-war in chains, that I daresay I was not infringing upon the limits of that ten-mile banishment.

  At Cornhill, the people set free from their cages a vast number of sparrows and other little birds, which flew about the King, some resting on his crown and on his shoulders.

  At Cheapside, he was met by a company of maidens, all dressed in white, playing timbrels and dancing and crying:

  ‘Welcome, Henry the Fifth, King of England and of France!’

  And as he passed round to St Paul’s, there were a number of little pavilions lining the streets, and in each pavilion, like a statue, a girl, with a gold cup in her hands. And each girl blew out of her cup and showered leaves of gold upon the King’s head as he passed.

  And the crowds the whole way from Blackheath to St Paul’s were so thick that we had to proceed very slowly, since we could scarcely get through them. And from every window, every tower, every house, every rooftop, every crevice, people cheered us, and shouted, and hailed, and hurrahed, and sang, until the whole of the streets of London seemed to reverberate like one great drum beating to the slow triumphant music of that song:

  DEO GRATIAS ANGLIA REDDE PRO VICTORIA!

  And the conduits ran with wine.

  The King heard Mass sung in St Paul’s, and then passed on to his palace of Westminster. He wore a gown of purple, simply cut. With the great crown of England on his head.

  I wore a suit of buckram, simply cut. With my uncle Hugh’s seal-ring on my little finger. I heard Mass too, since the doors were left open and it was possible to make one’s devotions standing in the middle of the crowd in the streets.

  Then I passed on to the Boar’s Head tavern.

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  How Sir John Fastolf drank the elixir of life

  18th September

  Dame Milicent was in Yarmouth, spending her pin money. (£100 a year, if you want to know.) My stepson Scrope – then just big enough to cut a sorry figure on his hobby horse – no doubt skipped behind her in attendance. The strings would have dangled from her apron, and he would have wanted them in his fingers.

  Caister could wait.

  I was back from the wars.

  We were back from the wars, King Henry V and I – and while that cold fish might be content to save his Plantagenet sperm for the French princess, I saw no harm in learning a trick or two in London to take home for my wife’s delight in due course. Be sure, Uxorious Reader, my dear brother, all the various dalliances and pranks and pastimes I describe in these pages I have practised also with my wife. I brought everything home to her in the end. Yet to tell you true, Dame Milicent was never so wild a body in bed as I would have wished. She suffered my embraces rather than enjoyed them. All the same, her eyes and thighs widened an inch when I taught her the ways I brought back from London after this celebration at the Boar’s Head following the English army’s triumphal return from Agincourt. I remember that she was so pleased with the new game that her greed for it threatened somewhat to interfere with my supervision of the unloading of the 130 tuns of Gascony wine which I had at that time as ransom for the Lord of Soubooze – which fleet of sheer intoxication made a valorous sight as it came wallowing up the Hundred River I can promise you. And now, in any case, Dame Milicent dead, I have my niece to keep me warm in bed at Caister of a night. Miranda is a lovely lively girl, loveliest liveliest, like a wave of the sea with the sun catching its underlip as it turns upon a golden shore – and there is nothing I have been able to teach this wise and innocent niece of mine which she does not love, and want to do again twice in the morning. Oh I know there are some who say an old man should not wear himself out between sheets in this way, when he stands on the threshold of eternity. But the way I look at it is this:

  If heaven is unendurable bliss infinitely prolonged then we had better start learning how to endure it.

  Besides, such foretastes, carnal and imperfect as they are, cannot harm me, nor deflect me from my last great voyage. I was ever a voyager, an Odysseus, an explorer of new winds across old seas. I must rejoice, at all events, that my member has not lost puissance or appetite with the years – rather on the contrary, to Miranda’s pleasure.

  Besides, my shadow on the threshold of eternity is nineteen years long. I shall live to be a hundred. I had it of a certainty from a sybil.

  Worcester, my Cyclops, where was I?

  Ah yes. Ha! The Boar’s Head. What! That naked dinner.

  Nell Quickly was there, and Pistol her spouse, and my dear adorable Doll. And we drank and we sang. And I can tell you that it was not the Agincourt Song that we sang in the Dolphin chamber of the Boar’s Head. No. It was this:

  I cannot eat but little meat,

  My stomach is not good;

  But sure I think that I can drink

  With him that wears a hood.

  Though I go bare, take ye no care,

  I nothing am a-cold;

  I stuff my skin so full within

  Of jolly good ale and old.

  Back and side go bare, go bare;

  Both foot and hand go cold;

  But, belly, God send thee good ale enough,

  Whether it be new or old.

  I love these old English songs as much as dim chalk cliffs or wild bells at midnight or mist or drenched roses or roast beef. All the English things. The shifting hedgerows in the fog.

  We’d sung a verse or two together, and shared a few firkins, and I had untapped a basket of my figs sent up from Cerne Abbas on the usual mule, when Nell (or was it Doll?), ever ready to avail that bawdy establishment of the newest fangled and most intricate comforts, enquired if we martial gentlemen had heard of what the Romans were doing now.

  ‘Poping each other,’ suggested Pistol.

  I confess my own imagination flew to some of the classical – or I suppose I had better say sub-classical – scenes conjured up for me in my schoolboy days by my tutor Ravenstone. I must have launched into a description of one of these, for Mrs Quickly said:

  ‘No, Jack! None of your naughty whippings. A fine feast.’

  ‘A feast?’

  ‘A feast,’ said Nell. ‘An unusual meal on an unusual table.’

  Pistol pulled at his moustaches. ‘Ambrosial?’ he enquired. ‘Or nectarine?’

  ‘Figs if you like,’ said Mrs Quickly. (Well, Mrs Pistol now – but Quickly sounds quicker than Pistol, don’t you think?)

  ‘Now your fig—’ I began.

  ‘Figs or fish or fruit or gumbo,’ said Nell Quickly-Pistol. ‘Pies or jams or plums or puddings.’ She winked in the firelight. ‘Anything you fancy,’ she said.

  I shrugged. ‘It doesn’t sound so interesting to me,’ I said. ‘I can eat my figs any time anyway.’

  Doll giggled.

  ‘That’s as may be,’ said the inventive Nell. ‘But your Roman mischiefs, O Jesu, they serve this meal up on an unaccountable table, as I say.’

  ‘What unaccountable table?’

  ‘The naked body of a girl!’

  Pistol started to sing again:

  ‘Back and side go bare, go bare …’

  I popped a handful of figs into my mouth.

  We were in business.

  When in Rome, do as the Romans do. And quantum libet.

  When in the Boar’s Head, do what Mrs Quickly tells you. And ditto.

  Doll Tearsheet stripped.

  She lay down on the carved couch in the firelight.

  Nell then brought in fruit and sweets and pastry so thin you could see through it, as well as liquorice and creams, sauces and sweet wine.

  She employed the jams and syrups to stick some of the food to Doll’s firm flesh.

  I dined first.

  I nibbled cherries dangling from Doll’s nipples.

  I gnawed the veil of pastry from her breasts.

  I ate to the hilt a banana which Mrs Quickly pushed between her thighs.

  I licked the cream from her lovely little belly, and returned with teeth and tongue to the stick of liquorice now inserted
in her crack.

  Doll, for her part, grew so excited by the action first of the banana and then the liquorice stick that her own love-juices began to flow. She tasted delicious. Her legs were tight around my head. When I got to the last bit of the liquorice, I gave her little bud a gentle bite. She had been fooling around with my cock while I licked her and slicked her. Now she tossed me off wildly as I drank her oyster. I teased her and tickled her with the tip of my tongue. Then I drew back my head. Nell Quickly poured a thimbleful of sherris sack into her friend’s dearest bodily part. I sucked out every last drop of it, and a good deal else besides. Doll came and went beneath the ministrations of my busy tongue and lips. It was like seven great waves breaking on a virgin shore.

  Virgin, you will say, madam, is a foolish word to apply in the cunt of a whore.

  As you wish. But then Doll had never been brought to her seven tidal waves in quite such a manner as this before. It was her initiation in the art of being eaten. She was all in ecstasy on that couch before the sea-coal fire, urged on by cries and whispers from Nell Quickly, and by toasts to the vanishing food from the excited Pistol.

  For my part, I kept my tongue as stiff as my sword at the crucial comings. I licked her up and I licked her down. And when she was most velvety and defenceless, I thrust away with my tongue until she was quite quenched.

  Later, we went at it top-to-toe.

  Nell had baked a pastry, a great pastry, in the shape of a penis. I had to fit this over my weapon, and Doll nibbled it and ate it, first the pastry, and then the flesh, while I took cream from her exquisite little clack-dish. I shot my cream into her sucking mouth at the precise moment of licking out the last curds from her cunt. We stayed for a long while like that, by the light of the fire, with my tongue in her tail, and my prick in her mouth. It was all very sweet.

  Meanwhile, Nell had sprinkled soft cheese over her own nipples, with onion shredded in it, and her husband Pistol was doing his duty gobbling it all up, every bit, and tickling her splendidly about the tits with his waxed moustaches while so engaged.