When the news reached Charles the Hardy that what he had prayed for since the days of the League of Public Good had come at last, and that his allies were on the soil of France, he raised his siege of Neuss and made straight for Calais by forced marches, very slenderly accompanied. This was the first surprise the English had, who had expected him to bring five hundred knights and their retainers. The rest of his army should have been turned against Louis of France three months before; but this he had not done. It appeared that he had troubles of his own in Bar and Lorraine.
In company with the Duke, King Edward moved his great host from Calais. It was the Duke’s plan that this army — which was, he said, enough to conquer not only France but Italy and Rome itself — should march on his own territory as far as Péronne and then strike a blow westward in the region of the Vermandois, whilst his troops, having taken measure with Duke René of Lorraine, should invade Champagne, so that King Louis would be caught like an eel in a spear. It would be the easier, because the Count of St. Pol, uncle to King Edward’s wife, was secretly pledged to them and would deliver the key-town of St. Quentin into their hands.
It was mid-July now, late for campaigning, the best of the year slipping away. They marched by St. Omer and Ruisseauville; camped two nights then at Azincourt. The Duke of Gloucester and some of his company rode out to look at the ridge where four thousand Englishmen had cracked the chivalry of France like a rotten nut.
At Péronne, a certain Louis de Sainville awaited them with very polite letters from the Count of St. Pol, who would have delivered St. Quentin to them before now, he said, only that by so doing he would have lost all credit and communication in France and so could have served them in nothing further: but now that he saw the King of England so near, he would do all that the Duke of Burgundy had desired of him. King Edward showed great joy at this news. Gold mists at sunrise and a morning sky huddling down close to the earth hinted that the autumn rains would begin early this year. He would want a strong town to base his army on. The King had appeared less than his common self since he arrived in France; talked and smiled seldom; was very angry over trifles. He did not spend much time in company with his brother-in-law of Burgundy; preferred the presence of his other brother-in-law, Earl Rivers, and his debauched stepson, the Marquis Dorset. There was a certain look of softness about his neck and chest now and the lovely boyish line of his face from cheekbone to chin had loosened. He was thirty-three.
They had news that King Louis, after spending a great deal of time on his knees in the Cathedral of Beauvais before an image of our Lady of Peace, had moved to Compiègne with the royal artillery and the Scots Guard. In all, he was estimated to have some fifteen thousand men on the East borders of Normandy, under the command of those very useful soldiers, the Counts of Penthièvre and Dammartin and Tanguy du Châtel; and he had prudently commanded that each of the rich citizens of Rheims should make himself a hand-gun on the German model, at his own expense.
Lord Hastings was among those who attended King Edward when he rode out from the camp at Péronne to receive the delivery of St. Quentin. King Edward was in better humour than he had been for days past, although the sky at which he squinted anxiously was bruised with cloud.
“Charles the Hardy may be my brother by marriage,” he told Lord Hastings, “but though I say it to my shame, the man’s a fool; has wasted my time and his own with his goddamned unreasonable quarrels in Germany. But for him, we’d ’ve been in Paris by now. Now, my uncle St. Pol’s a horse of another colour. See what a blessing it is to marry a wife who has foreign kin. St. Quentin’s worth seas and mountains to us. From there we strike at Beauvais and Rouen with a secure base. Charles must draw off part of Louis’ forces — whether he’s done his messing in the Duchy of Bar or not — and then we fight a field.”
“Aye, in the rain at this rate,” grunted the Duke of Clarence.
If the King’s magnificent body had a little coarsened in the last years, the Duke of Clarence was now definitely fat. His face, that had once had strong cheekbones and a pointed chin, was as round and swollen as a tomcat’s.
“What of it?” said the King. “We’ll be snug in St. Quentin before the clouds break.”
“Please God, amen,” answered the Duke, mauling his charger’s mouth as the beast tried to break into a trot.
The town was in fair sight now: good walls, fat little towers, glimpses of a grand church and pompous hôtel-delville, thick fields of grain about the place. It had a friendly look. The nobles and the main body of troops reined-up and stood to gaze at it whilst a couple of hundred outriders and a Herald, embroidered banners waggling, bright badges of the rose-and-sun or the black bull showing up gaily on scoured steel, trotted anglingly ahead to make formal demand for the rendition of the place. The King was smiling. Lord Hastings wondered about the women in the town and thought it would be pleasant to hear a French girl laugh and give him back-answers again. What was the tavern-song he had heard on the road a few days back? A ballade with an oddly memorable catchline: Il n’a bon bee qu’à Paris: true enough, and at this rate they should see Paris.
The bright outriders dwindled away toward the town. The gates were shut, but in a few moments they would open and a procession come out, carrying the cross and holy water, to welcome the Count of St. Pol’s allies in. Lord Hastings distrusted the Wydvylles from the very depths of his guts; but he admitted gladly that in this case their kinship with the slippery Constable of France was very useful. He turned to the Earl of Rivers, who sat a tall bay horse beside him. Lord Anthony was in glorious Italian armour of white steel damascened with gold under a surcoat of cloth-of-gold with his arms, argent, a fess and canton gules, on breast and back.
“We shall have much to thank your noble uncle for,” he said to him. “This looks a very proper town.”
Lord Rivers gave him his infectious smile.
“Then on my uncle’s behalf I make you particularly welcome to it. You and I must find some little amusements here before the serious work of the campaign begins.”
The outriders were almost under the town walls by now, small dots of shimmer and colour like coloured dust-specks in a sunbeam. Sun dropped on them through a ragged hole in the blue clouds. Then a queer thing happened. A bunch of white smoke jutted out suddenly from one of the little towers. A dull noise as though a door had slammed came up to them, and a sapling past which the last of the outriders was trotting shook and fell over, lifting its roots in the air. Three smoke-puffs blossomed out all at once along the wall. Earth spouted, like water when a stone is dropped in it, among the cornfields. Then the gates opened. It was not the procession with the cross that issued from them. They could see that clearly. The mounted men who burst out in a solid wedge had lances couched and were in armour. A sleepy, far-away sound that was the yelling of startled and infuriated Englishmen came drifting back along the road. The packed sallying-force hit the party of outriders as lightning hits an oak; burst it to flinders. An awful noise, neither a scream nor an oath, came from King Edward. He dashed his spurs against his charger’s barrel so that it flung forward and almost slipped. Then they were all galloping toward the town, grabbing at swords or axes and slamming down vizors as they went. Before they had gone three hundred yards they checked, seeing no employment. It was all over. The sortie had emptied a dozen saddles, wheeled and gone through the gates, that shut behind it. The English outriders were pelting back in a mob up the road toward their commanders, one or two of the bowmen halting and turning to discharge futile arrows against the town. The expression on King Edward’s face was appalling. He could not speak. The Duke of Clarence was bawling “Treason!” at the pitch of his voice and shaking his hands in the air so that his armour rattled. Lord Rivers was as pale as the argent field of his own arms. “There is some mistake,” he said foolishly. “There is some mistake.” The Duke heard him and made a whinnying noise like a laugh. “Mistake, my Lord, mistake: there’s no mistake, but that your damned uncle’s a traitor like all the re
st of your ditch-begotten house.”
At this moment it began to stream with rain.
No one knew what happened between King Edward and the Duke of Burgundy in the camp that evening. The Duke of Gloucester, who visited Duke Charles after his private interview with his royal brother-in-law, reported him to be in an impossible temper and preparing to leave next day to join his army in the Duchy of Bar. The English camp was full of angry men. The common foot-soldiers, who had looked forward to the inns and brothels of St. Quentin, were cursing the rain, the war, the Count of St. Pol and, under their breaths, the King. The Duke of Clarence was alarmingly drunk and speaking in the most unrestrained fashion about the Wydvylles and their French kin. The Duke of Gloucester bit his lip and replied shortly to those who wished to discuss the situation with him. The King was invisible, and the Marquis Dorset was talking of sending a challenge to the Duke of Clarence. Lord Hastings could not remember passing such an unpleasant evening since Kingmaker had chased them all out of England in the year 1470.
Next day Charles of Burgundy took formal leave of King Edward. The King, who showed him something a good deal less than cordiality, attended to no business except to order — as the usual rules of courtesy dictated — that their first and only prisoner, a little valet in the employ of a certain Mons. de Grassay, should have his liberty. The man was accordingly turned loose and invited by his guards to take his rump out of reach of their toes lest worse befall. Before he left the camp, however, Hastings noticed that Lord Stanley, that fat, little-eyed man with the gross hands, beckoned him up and talked seriously to him for several minutes. Lord Stanley had been with Charles the Hardy before Neuss and seemed unenthusiastic about the war.
Then there was rain and grumbling and camp fare, armour rusting though it was scoured every day, banners hanging damply from their poles, men sneezing and swearing under the tent-sides. In council, the Duke of Gloucester asked the King for three hundred lances with their complement of bows and some artillery. With these, he said, he could put them inside St. Quentin. The King had been lolling in his chair with his eyes half-shut, smelling at a scented orange. He dropped the thing, looked at the little white-faced Duke for a moment, then slumped back again.
“No, I’ll not move a man or loose an arrow now until Charles of Burgundy’s done something better than make promises. Let him invade Champagne first.”
“But we are wasting time here. The season’s half over and we’ve done nothing. Are we to wait here until Louis of Valois’ armed his whole kingdom?”
“I command this journey and I say we’ll wait for Duke Charles. Let’s have no more of it.”
The Duke twiddled a ring on his finger and did not speak again.
It did not seem, though, that Louis of Valois was in any hurry for a field. A few days later a little, nervous-looking fellow with a shield and tabard of the lilies of France turned up outside the camp. He said he was a Herald, though he did not behave like one, and that he had been instructed by the Christian King to apply, through the Lords Stanley and Howard, for an audience. Lord Hastings remembered fat Thomas Stanley’s talk with the released prisoner and could guess the sort of message that he had sent by him. King Edward received the Herald after dinner. This mission, the man said, concerned the desire King Louis entertained to have good friendship with his cousin of England in order that the two realms might flourish in peace. Never, since he had been King of France, had King Louis undertaken wars or enterprises against the realm of England. King Edward arched his eyebrows at this, and the Herald made great haste to explain that whatever had been done in the past for my Lord of Warwick had been intended solely against Burgundy. Further, said the Herald, those who had invited the King of England to come into France at such expense had done it for their own ends. Winter was coming on, too. Would King Edward grant a safe conduct to certain French ambassadors in order that the differences between the two realms might be discussed in amity and reason?
King Edward scowled round his Council. His face had the perplexed, sullen look it had worn ever since he came to Calais. Almost without looking sideways at one another, the Lords Stanley, Howard, Rivers and Dorset and the plump-faced Dr. Morton declared for an armistice and a safe conduct. The King turned to his brother of Clarence.
“You, George?”
Duke George shrugged. “I don’t trust Frenchmen. There’s a trick.”
The Duke of Norfolk nodded. “I say so too.”
“My Lord of Essex?”
The old man cleared his throat and blew his cheeks out. “Your Grace, if I may say so — and I’ve seen wars in France before with your great father — the thing’s an insult to us. We’re here to fight, and I say fight and be damned to it.”
“Will?”
“It’s true that winter’s coming on and that Duke Charles has disappointed us: but it seems early to talk of truces and embassies.”
The King was silent for a long while now, tapping his fingers on his knee and wrinkling his nose. He did not look at the Duke of Gloucester when he asked: “And what do you say, Dickon?”
“You know what I say.”
Duke Richard, too, was looking at nobody. His face was as impossible to read as always, but his hands, commonly busy with his dagger or rings, were perfectly still.
“Well, say it, in God’s name.”
“Unless Louis of Valois is prepared to surrender the crown that’s yours by right, then we shall be miserably disgraced for ever if we even think of treating with him: and I do not imagine he is ready to part with the crown yet.”
“A safe conduct commits us to nothing,” said the Earl of Rivers quickly and gently.
The King stopped tapping his knee and spread his hand out as though dropping something.
“He may send his ambassadors.”
The end began. The English commissioners, Dr. Morton, Master of the Rolls, Lord Howard, Sir Thomas St. Leger, met the Bastard of Bourbon, the Seigneur de St. Pierre and the Bishop of Evreux at Dives and asked them for the crown of France. Pull devil, pull baker: the French final offer was seventy-five thousand écus in cash, a stipend of fifty thousand a year for seven years, the marriage of the Dauphin to the Princess Elizabeth with an endowment of six thousand English pounds a year, and a trade agreement.
What King Louis privately paid or promised the English commissioners for their acceptance of such terms, Lord Hastings did not know. He himself had since been offered an annual pension of two thousand écus; had neither accepted nor refused it.
“This gift is by the good pleasure of the King your master,” he said coldly to the French agent, “and not of my seeking. If you wish me to take it you may drop it in my sleeve: but you will get no quittance or undertaking out of me. I have no wish to have it said of me: The Court Chamberlain of England is a pensioner of the King of France.”
The peace irked him like a bad taste in the mouth; was a betrayal of Charles the Hardy, who, with however little grace, had helped them four years ago when they most needed it. Duke Charles had visited the English camp again, arriving sweating and saddle-sore with only fifteen followers. King Edward seemed disturbed to see him, and more disturbed when the Duke, talking in English at the top of his voice, flung in his teeth the names of Créçy, Poictiers and Azincourt, and called him a disgraced King who had sold the honour of the finest army ever brought to France. The scene was a particularly miserable one, because the tallest and handsomest King in Christendom had appeared, for a moment, of less presence than the spluttering Duke with half his teeth missing and white smears at the corners of his lips.
They moved to Amiens, where the Christian King had set up lodging, and the town was opened to them. From his tent-door now Lord Hastings could see an ant-thick column of English soldiery, half-armed, keeping no order, dribbling out of camp and across the Somme. Amiens was the Land of Cockayne, better than Calais. Gascon, Burgundy, Touraine, Beaune, Rochelle, Bordeaux, Champagne: they had their choice to drink, and did not pay for it. When they arrived yesterday, a p
rocession had met them that seemed as numerous as their own: three hundred wagons loaded with hogsheads of Bordeaux, a peace-offering from the Christian King. That was not all. Two great tables were set up by the town-gate, heavy with all such dishes as created the most thirst and with the best wines that could be imagined: no talk of water. Fat, jolly Frenchmen, all men of good family, sat beaming and waving friendly hands, ready to perform the offices of panders and butlers for common Englishmen. It was like a coronation-feast or a royal wedding. Ten taverns in Amiens were open scot-free to the soldiers of the invading army, and there were jousts arranged for the nobility.
Lord Hastings wried his mouth to one side and put a hand on his horse’s neck. He could not like it. Harry of Monmouth’s wars and victories left England only the poorer in the end. Peace on a reasonable basis had more to be said for it than a long campaign: but it seemed too much, too much in some way that he could not clearly formulate, that the Rose of Rouen should have led twenty thousand men out of England only to make them drunk at King Louis’ charges, squeezed a hundred-and-fifty thousand pounds out of England only to squeeze four-hundred-and-twenty-five thousand écus out of France.
He would have thought it so himself four years ago, he reflected; has changed since Tewkesbury, Well, God amend all. I’d be best to go into the town and see how our English are behaving themselves.
Someone else had felt a duty on him, it seemed, that morning. As he trotted out of the camp, another rider, attended by two squires, waved and joined him. It was the handsome, thin-faced Lord Lovel, looking very fine in his white German harness and blue velvet surcoat tagged with gold. He gave Lord Hastings a quick, ironic smile and a good-morning.
Under the Hog: A Novel of Richard III Page 29
