Agincourt - Cornwell Bernard - Страница 69
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“And it might be a good day to say your prayers,” the priest suggested.
“I will, father,” Hook promised, and he began praying that very moment. Let us reach your day, he prayed to Saint Crispinian, without seeing the French, and I will know we are safe. Let us escape, he prayed, and take us safe home. Blind the French to our presence, he begged, and he added that prayer to Saint Raphael who was the patron saint of the blind. Just take us safe home, he prayed, and he vowed to Saint Crispinian that he would make a pilgrimage to Soissons if the saint took him home and he would put money into a jar in the cathedral, enough money to pay for the altar frontal that John Wilkinson had torn apart so long ago. Just take us home, he prayed, take us all home and make us safe.
And that day, Saint Raphael’s Day, Thursday the twenty-fourth of October, 1415, Hook’s prayers were answered.
They were riding through a region of small, steep hills and fast-flowing streams, guided by a local man, a fuller, who knew the tangle of bewildering tracks that laced the countryside. He led Hook and the vanguard’s scouts along a wagon path that twisted beneath trees. The road to Calais was some distance to the west, but it could not be followed because it led to Hesdin, a walled town on the bank of a small river, and the bridge there was guarded by a barbican, and so the guide took them toward another crossing. “You go north after the river,” the man said, “just go north and you find the road again. You understand?” He was frightened of the archers and even more scared of the men-at-arms in royal livery who rode just behind and made the decisions about whether the fuller could be trusted.
“I understand,” Hook said.
“Just go north,” the man insisted. The path dropped into a valley where a village lay on the southern bank of a river. “La Riviere Ternoise,” the man said, then pointed to the far bank where the hills climbed steeply. “You go up there,” he said, “and find the road to Saint-Omer.”
“Saint-Omer?”
“Oui!” the guide said and Hook remembered his journey with Melisande when Saint-Omer had been their goal and Calais had lain not far beyond. So close, he thought. The nervous fuller said something else and Hook only half heard and asked him to say it again.’ The local people,” the man said, “call the Ternoise the River of Swords.”
That name sent a shiver through Hook. “Why?”
The man shrugged. “They are all mad,” he said, “it’s just a river.”
The river was shallow despite the recent rain and the knight commanding the men-at-arms ordered Hook to take his archers across the ford and up the farther slope. “Wait at the crest,” he said and Hook obediently kicked Raker down to the River of Swords. His archers followed him, splashing through water that barely reached their horses’ bellies. The slope beyond the river was steep and he and his men climbed it slowly on their tired horses. The rain had stopped, though every now and then a spatter of drizzle would sweep from a sky that grew ever darker. The clouds were low, almost black, and the air above the eastern horizon was the color of soot. “It’s going to fairly piss down,” Hook said to Will of the Dale.
“Looks like it,” Will answered apprehensively. The air was oppressive, thick, full of a strange menace.
Hook was scarcely halfway up the slope before a whole band of men-at-arms splashed through the river and spurred up the hill behind him. Hook turned in the saddle and saw the column closing up on the Ternoise’s far bank as though a sudden sense of urgency had overtaken the army. Sir John, his standard-bearer close behind, thumped past Hook, riding for the crest that was outlined against the slate-dark sky and a moment later the king himself galloped up the slope on a horse the color of night. “What’s happening?” Tom Scarlet asked.
“God knows,” Hook said. The king, his companions, and every other man-at-arms had curbed their horses at the hill’s crest from where they now gazed northward.
Then Hook himself reached the skyline and he too stared.
Ahead of him the ground fell away to a village that lay in a small green valley. A road climbed from the village, leading onto a wide reach of land that was bare earth beneath the glowering sky. That bare plateau had been plowed, and on either side of the newly cut furrows were thick woods. The battlements of a small castle just showed above the trees to the west. A banner flew from the castellated tower, but it was too far away to see what badge it showed.
Something about the lay of the land was familiar, then Hook remembered it. “I’ve been here before,” he said to no one in particular. “Me and Melisande, we were here.”
“You were?” Tom Scarlet answered, but he was not really paying attention.
“We met a horseman here,” Hook said, staring north in a daze, “and he told us the name of the place, but I can’t remember it.”
“Must have a name, I suppose,” Scarlet said absently.
More Englishmen reached the crest and stopped there to stare. No one spoke much and many made the sign of the cross.
Because in front of them, and as numerous as the sands on the shore or as the stars in the sky, was the enemy. The forces of France and Burgundy were at the plowland’s far end and they were a multitude. Their bright banners boasted of their numbers and their banners were uncountable.
The might of France blocked the road to Calais and the English were trapped.
Henry, Earl of Chester, Duke of Aquitaine, Lord of Ireland, and King of England, was given a new and savage energy by the sight of the enemy. “Form battle!” he shouted. “Form battle!” He galloped his horse across the face of his gathering army. “Obey your leaders! They know where you should be, form on their standards! By the grace of God we fight this day! Form battle!”
The sun was low behind the lowering clouds and the French army was still gathering under banners as thick as trees. “If every banner is a lord,” Thomas Evelgold said, “and if every lord leads ten men, how many men is that?”
“Goddam thousands,” Hook said.
“And ten’s a low number,” the centenar said, “very low. More like a hundred men for every banner, maybe two hundred!”
“Sweet Jesus,” Hook said and tried counting the enemy flags, but they were too many. All he knew was that the enemy was vast and England’s army was small. “God help us,” he could not resist saying, and once again he had the shivering recollection of the blood and screams in Soissons.
“Someone has to help us,” Evelgold said briskly, then turned to his archers. “We’re on the right. Dismount! Stakes and bows! Look lively now! I want boys for the horses! Come on, don’t dawdle! Move your goddam bones! We’ve got some dying to do!”
The horses were left in the pastures beside the village as the army climbed the shallow slope to the plateau. The enemy could not be seen from the small valley, but as Hook breasted the rise onto the plowland the French were visible again and he felt his fears crawl back. What he saw was a proper army. Not a sickly, disheveled band of fugitives, but a proud, massed army come to punish the men who had dared invade France.
The English vanguard was on the right now, and its archers were farthest to the right where they were joined by half the archers who had formed the army’s center. The other half joined the rearguard who now formed on the left. So the wings of the army were each a mass of archers who flanked the men-at-arms who made a line between them.
“Sweet Christ,” Tom Scarlet said, “I’ve seen more men at a horse fair.”
He was pointing to the English men-at-arms. There were fewer than a thousand of them and they made a pathetically small line at the center of the array. The archers were far more numerous. Over two thousand were now assembled on each flank. “Stakes!” A knight wearing a green surcoat galloped along the face of the archers, “plant your stakes, lads!”
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