Harlequin. Part 27

The archers ran into the gaps between the men-at-arms, and the French, seeing their tormentors vanish, gave a great cheer. ' '

Montjoie St Denis!'

's.h.i.+elds!' the Earl of Northampton shouted and the English men-at-arms locked their s.h.i.+elds together and raised their own lances to make a hedge of points.

'St George!' the Earl screamed. 'St George!'

Montjoie St Denis!' Enough hors.e.m.e.n had got through the arrows and the pits, and still the men-at-arms streamed up the hill. Enough hors.e.m.e.n had got through the arrows and the pits, and still the men-at-arms streamed up the hill.

And now, at last, charged home.

Chapter 13.

If a plum was thrown at a conroi, the experts said, it should be impaled on a lance. That was how close the hors.e.m.e.n were supposed to be in a charge because that way they stood a chance of living, but if the conroi scattered then each man would end up surrounded by enemies. Your neighbour in a cavalry charge, the experienced men told the younger, should be closer to you than your wife. Closer even than your wh.o.r.e. But the first French charge was a crazed gallop and the men first became scattered when they slaughtered the Genoese and the disarray became worse as they raced uphill to close on the enemy.

The charge was not supposed to be a crazed gallop, but an ordered, dreadful and disciplined a.s.sault. The men, lined knee to knee, should have started slowly and stayed close until, and only at the very last minute, they spurred into a gallop to crash their tight-bunched lances home in unison. That was how the men were trained to charge, and their destriers were trained just as hard. A horse's instinct, on facing a packed line of men or cavalry, was to shy away, but the big stallions were ruthlessly schooled to keep running and so crash into the packed enemy and there to keep moving, stamping, biting and rearing. A charge of knights was supposed to be thundering death on hooves, a flail of metal driven by the ponderous weight of men, horses and armour, and properly done it was a ma.s.s maker of widows.

But the men of Philip's army who had dreamed of breaking the enemy into ribbons and slaughtering the dazed survivors had reckoned without archers and pits. By the time the undisciplined first French charge reached the English men-at-arms it had broken itself into sc.r.a.ps and then been slowed to a walk because the long, smooth and inviting slope turned out to be an obstacle course of dead horses, unsaddled knights, hissing arrows and leg-cracking pits concealed in the gra.s.s. Only a handful of men reached the enemy.

That handful spurred over the last few yards and aimed their lances at the dismounted English men-at-arms, but the hors.e.m.e.n were met by more lances that were braced against the ground and tilted up to pierce their horses' b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The stallions ran onto the lances, twisted away and the Frenchmen were falling. The English men-at-arms stepped forward with axes and swords to finish them off.

'Stay in line!' the Earl of Northampton shouted.

More horses were threading through the pits, and there were no archers in front to slow them now. These were the third and fourth ranks of the French charge. They had suffered less damage from arrows and they came to help the men hacking at the English line that still bristled with lances. Men roared their battle cries, hacked with swords and axes, and the dying horses dragged down the English lances so that the French could at last close on the men-at-arms. Steel rang on steel and thumped on wood, but each horseman was faced by two or three men-at-arms, and the French were being dragged from their saddles and butchered on the ground.

'No prisoners!' the Earl of Northampton shouted. 'No prisoners!' Those were the King's orders. To take a man prisoner meant possible wealth, but it also required a moment of courtesy to enquire whether an enemy truly yielded and the English had no time for such civility. They needed only to kill the hors.e.m.e.n who kept streaming up the hill.

The King, watching from beneath the mill's furled sails, which creaked as the wind twitched their tethers, saw that the French had broken through the archers only on the right, where his son fought and where the line lay closest to the French and the slope was gentlest. The great charge had been broken by arrows, but more than enough hors.e.m.e.n had survived and those men were spurring towards the place where the swords rang. When the French charge began it had been spread all across the battlefield, but now it shrank into a wedge shape as the men facing the English left swerved away from the archers there and added their weight to the knights and men-at-arms who hacked at the Prince of Wales's battle. Hundreds of hors.e.m.e.n were still milling about in the valley's muddy bottom, unwilling to face the arrow storm a second time, but French marshals were re-forming those men and sending them up the hill towards the growing melee that fought under the banners of Alencon and the Prince of Wales.

'Let me go down there, sire,' the Bishop of Durham, looking ungainly in his heavy mail and holding a ma.s.sive spiked mace, appealed to the King.

'They're not breaking,' Edward said mildly. His line of men-at-arms was four ranks deep and only the first two were fighting, and fighting well. A horseman's greatest advantage over infantry was speed, but the French charge had been sapped of all velocity. The hors.e.m.e.n were being forced into a walk to negotiate the corpses and pits, and there was no room beyond to spur into a trot before they were met by a vicious defence of axes, swords, maces and spears. Frenchmen hacked down, but the English held their s.h.i.+elds high and stabbed their blades into the horses' guts or else sliced swords across hamstrings. The destriers fell, screaming and kicking, breaking men's legs with their wild thras.h.i.+ng, but every horse down was an added obstacle and, fierce as the French a.s.sault was, it was failing to break the line. No English banners had toppled yet, though the King feared for his son's bright flag that was closest to the most violent fighting.

'Have you seen the oriflamme?' he asked his entourage.

'It fell, sire,' a household knight answered. The man pointed down the slope to where a heap of dead horses and broken men were the remnants of the first French attack. 'Somewhere there, sir. Arrows.'

'G.o.d bless arrows,' the King said.

A conroi of fourteen Frenchmen managed to negotiate the pits without harm. 'Montjoie St Denis!' 'Montjoie St Denis!' they shouted, and couched their lances as they spurred into the melee, where they were met by the Earl of Northampton and a dozen of his men. they shouted, and couched their lances as they spurred into the melee, where they were met by the Earl of Northampton and a dozen of his men.

The Earl was using a broken lance as a pike and he rammed the splintered shaft into a horse's chest, felt the lance slide off the armour concealed by the trapper, and instinctively lifted his s.h.i.+eld. A mace cracked on it, driving one spike clean through the leather and willow, but the Earl had his sword dangling by a strap and he dropped the lance, gripped the sword's hilt and stabbed it into the horse's fetlock, making the beast twist away. He dragged the s.h.i.+eld clear of the mace's spikes, swung the sword at the knight, was parried, then a man-at-arms seized the Frenchman's weapon and tugged. The Frenchman pulled back, but the Earl helped and the Frenchman shouted as he was tumbled down to the English feet. A sword ran into the armour gap at his groin and he doubled over, then a mace crushed his helmet and he was left, twitching, as the Earl and his men climbed over his body and hacked at the next horse and man.

The Prince of Wales spurred into the melee, made conspicuous by a fillet of gold that circled his black helmet. He was only sixteen, well built, strong, tall and superbly trained. He fended an axe away with his s.h.i.+eld and rammed his sword through another horseman's mail.

'Off the b.l.o.o.d.y horse!' the Earl of Northampton shouted at the Prince. 'Get off the b.l.o.o.d.y horse!' He ran to the Prince, seized the bridle and tugged the horse away from the fight. A Frenchman spurred in, trying to spear the Prince's back, but a man-at-arms in the Prince's green and white livery slammed his s.h.i.+eld into the destrier's mouth and the animal twitched away.

The Earl dragged the Prince back. 'They see a man on horseback, sire,' he shouted up, 'and they think he's French.'

The Prince nodded. His own household knights had reached him now and they helped him down from the saddle. He said nothing. If he had been offended by the Earl, he hid it behind his face-piece as he went back to the melee. 'St George! St George!' The Prince's standard-bearer struggled to stay with his master, and the sight of the richly embroidered flag attracted still more screaming Frenchmen.

'In line!' the Earl shouted. 'In line!' but the dead horses and butchered men made obstacles that neither the French nor English could cross and so the men-at-arms, led by the Prince, were scrambling over the bodies to reach more enemies. A disembowelled horse trailed its guts towards the English, then sank onto its forelegs to pitch its rider towards the Prince, who rammed the sword into the man's helmet, mangling the visor and starting blood from the eyeholes. 'St George!' The Prince was exultant and his black armour was streaked with enemy blood. He was fighting with his visor raised, for else he could not see properly, and he was loving the moment. The hours and hours of weapons practice, the sweating days when sergeants had drilled him and beat at his s.h.i.+eld and cursed him for not keeping his sword point high, were all proving their worth, and he could have asked for nothing more in this life: a woman in the camp and an enemy coming in their hundreds to be killed.

The French wedge was widening as more men climbed the hill. They had not broken through the line, but they had drawn the two front English ranks across the tideline of dead and wounded, and thus scattered them into groups of men who defended themselves against a welter of hors.e.m.e.n. The Prince was among them. Some Frenchmen, unhorsed but unwounded, were fighting on foot.

'Forward!' the Earl of Northampton shouted at the third rank. It was no longer possible to hold the s.h.i.+eld wall tight. Now he had to wade into the horror to protect the Prince, and his men followed him into the maelstrom of horses, blades and carnage. They scrambled over dead horses, tried to avoid the beating hooves of dying horses and drove their blades into living horses to bring the riders down to where they could be savaged.

Each Frenchman had two or three English footmen to contend against, and though the horses snapped their teeth, reared and lashed their hoofs, and though the riders beat left and right with their swords, the unmounted English invariably crippled the destriers in the end, and more French knights were pitched onto the hoof-scarred gra.s.s to be bludgeoned or stabbed to death. Some Frenchmen, recognizing the futility, spurred back across the pits to make new conrois among the survivors. Squires brought them spare lances, and the knights, rearmed and wanting revenge, came back to the fight, and always they rode towards the prince's bright flag.

The Earl of Northampton was close to the flag now. He hammered his s.h.i.+eld into a horse's face, cut at its legs and stabbed at the rider's thigh. Another conroi came from the right, three of its men still holding lances and the others with swords held far forward. They slammed against the s.h.i.+elds of the Prince's bodyguard, driving those men back, but other men in green and white came to their help and the Prince pushed two of them out of the way so he could hack at a destrier's neck. The conroi wheeled away, leaving two of its knights dead.

'Form line!' the Earl shouted. 'Form line!' There was a lull in the fighting about the Prince's standard, for the French were regrouping.

And just then the second French battle, as large as the first, started down their hill. They came at a walk, knee to booted knee, lances held so close that a wind could not have pa.s.sed between them.

They were showing how it should be done.

The ponderous drums drove them on. The trumpets seared the sky.

And the French were coming to finish the battle.

'Eight,' Jake said.

Three,' Sam told Will Skeat.

'Seven,' Thomas said. They were counting arrows. Not one archer had died yet, not from Will Skeat's band, but they were perilously low on arrows. Skeat kept looking over the heads of the men-at-arms, fearful that the French would break through, but the line was holding. Once in a while, when no English banner or head was in the way, an archer would loose one of the precious arrows at a horseman, but when a shaft wasted itself by glancing off a helmet Skeat told them to save their supply. A boy had brought a dozen skins of water from the baggage and the men pa.s.sed the bags around.

Skeat lotted up the arrows and shook his head. No man had more than ten, while Father Hobbe, who admittedly had started with fewer than any of the men, had none.

'Go up the hill, father,' Skeat told the priest, 'and see if they're keeping any shafts back. The King's archers might spare some. Their captain's called Hal Crowley and he knows me. Ask him, anyway.' He did not sound hopeful. 'Right, lads, this way,' he said to the rest and led them towards the southern end of the English line where the French had not closed, then forward of the men-at-arms to reinforce the archers who, as low on arrows as the rest of the army, were keeping up a desultory hara.s.sment of any group of hors.e.m.e.n who threatened to approach their position. The guns were still firing intermittently, spewing a noisome stench of powder smoke on the battle's edge, but Thomas could see little evidence that the ribalds were killing any Frenchmen, though their noise, and the whistle of their iron missiles, was keeping the enemy hors.e.m.e.n well away from the flank. 'We'll wait here,' Skeat said, then swore for he had seen the French second line leave the far hill crest. They did not come like the first, in ragged chaos, but steadily and properly. Skeat made the sign of the cross. 'Pray for arrows,' he said.

The King watched his son fight. He had been worried when the Prince had advanced on horseback, but he nodded silent approval when he saw that the boy had possessed the good sense to dismount. The Bishop of Durham pressed to be allowed to go to Prince Edward's help, but the King shook his head. 'He has to learn to win fights.' He paused. 'I did.' The King had no intention of going down into the horror, not because he feared such a fight, but because once entangled with the French hors.e.m.e.n he would not be able to watch the rest of his line. His job was to stay by the mill and trickle reinforcements down to the most threatened parts of his army. Men of his reserve continually pleaded to be allowed into the melee, but the King obstinately refused them, even when they complained that their honour would be smirched if they missed the fight. The King dared not let men go, for he was watching the French second battle come down the hill and he knew he must h.o.a.rd every man in case that great sweep of hors.e.m.e.n battered through his line.

That second French line, almost a mile across and three or four ranks deep, walked down the slope where its horses had to thread the bodies of the slaughtered Genoese. 'Form up!' the conroi leaders shouted when the crossbowmen's bodies were behind them, and the men obediently moved knee to knee again as they rode into the softer ground. The hooves made hardly any sound in the wet soil so the loudest noises of the charge were the clink of mail, the thump of scabbards and the swish of trappers on the long gra.s.s. The drummers were still beating on the hill behind, but no trumpets called.

'You see the Prince's banner?' Guy Vexille asked Sir Simon Jekyll, who rode beside him.

'There.' Jekyll pointed his lance tip to where the ragged fight was hottest. All Vexille's conroi had baffles on their lances, placed just back from the tip so that the wooden spears did not bury themselves in their victims' bodies. A lance with a baffle could be dragged free of a dying man and used again. 'The highest flag,' Sir Simon added.

'Follow me!' Vexille shouted, and signalled to Henry Colley, who had been given the job of standard-bearer. Colley was bitter at the a.s.signment, reckoning he should have been allowed to fight with lance and sword, but Sir Simon had told him it was a privilege to carry the lance of St George and Colley was forced to accept the task. He planned to discard the useless lance with its red flag as soon as he entered the melee, but for now he carried it high as he wheeled away from the well organized line. Vexille's men followed their banner, and the departure of the conroi left a gap in the French formation and some men called out angrily, even accusing Vexille of cowardice, but the Count of Astarac ignored the jibes as he slanted across the rear of the line to where he judged his hors.e.m.e.n were precisely opposite the Prince's men and there he found a fortuitous gap, forced his horse into the s.p.a.ce and let his men follow as best they could.

Thirty paces to Vexille's left a conroi with badges showing yellow hawks on a blue field trotted up the English hill. Vexille did not see Sir Guillaume's banner, nor did Sir Guillaume see his enemy's badge of the yale. Both men were watching the hill ahead, wondering when the archers would shoot and admiring the bravery of the first charge's survivors who repeatedly withdrew a few paces, re-formed and recharged the stubborn English line. Not one man threatened to break the enemy, but they still tried even when they were wounded and their destriers were limping. Then, as the second French charge neared the line of Genoese crossbowmen killed by the English archers, more trumpets sounded from the French hill and the horses p.r.i.c.ked back their ears and tried to go into the canter. Men curbed the destriers and twisted awkwardly in their saddles to peer through visor slits to find what the trumpets meant and saw that the last of the French knights, the King and his household warriors, and the blind King of Bohemia and his companions, were trotting forward to add their weight and weapons to the slaughter. The King of France rode beneath his blue banner that was spattered with the golden fleur-de-lis, while the King of Bohemia's flag showed three white feathers on a dark red field. All the hors.e.m.e.n of France were committed now. The drummers sweated, the priests prayed and the royal trumpeters gave a great fanfare to presage the death of the English army.

The Count of Alencon, brother to the King, had begun the crazed charge that had left so many Frenchmen dead on the far slope, but the Count was also dead, his leg broken by his falling horse and his skull crushed by an English axe. The men he had led, those that still lived, were dazed, arrow stung, sweat-blinded and weary, but they fought on, turning their tired horses to thrash swords, maces and axes at men-at-arms, who fended the blows with s.h.i.+elds and raked their swords across the horses' legs. Then a new trumpet called much closer to the melee. The notes fell in urgent triplets that followed one after the other, and some of the hors.e.m.e.n registered the call and understood they were being ordered to withdraw. Not to retreat, but to make way, for the biggest attack was yet to come.

'G.o.d save the King,' Will Skeat said dourly, for he had ten arrows left and half France was coming at him.

Thomas was noticing the strange rhythm of battle, the odd lulls in the violence and the sudden resurrection of horror. Men fought like demons and seemed invincible and then, when the hors.e.m.e.n withdrew to regroup, they would lean on their s.h.i.+elds and swords and look like men close to death. The horses would stir again, English voices would shout warnings, and the men-at-arms would straighten and lift their dented blades. The noise on the hill was overwhelming: the occasional crack of the guns that did little except make the battlefield reek with h.e.l.l's dark stench, the screams of horses, the blacksmiths' clangour of weapons, men panting, shouting and moaning. Dying horses bared their teeth and thrashed the turf. Thomas blinked sweat from his eyes and stared at the long slope that was thick with dead horses, scores of them, hundreds maybe, and beyond them, approaching the bodies of the Genoese who had died under the arrows' lash, even more hors.e.m.e.n were coming beneath a new spread of bright flags. Sir Guillaume? Where was he? Did he live? Then Thomas realized that the terrible opening charge, when the arrows had felled so many horses and men, had been just that, an opening. The real battle was starting now.

'Will! Will!' Father Hobbe's voice called from somewhere behind the men-at-arms. 'Sir William!'

'Here, father!'

The men-at-arms made way for the priest, who was carrying an armload of arrow sheaves and leading a small-frightened boy who carried still more. 'A gift from the royal archers,' Father Hobbe said, and he spilled the sheaves onto the gra.s.s. Thomas saw the arrows had the red-dyed feathers of the King's own bowmen. He drew his knife, cut a binding lace, and stuffed the new arrows into his bag.

'Into line! Into line!' the Earl of Northampton shouted hoa.r.s.ely. His helmet was deeply dented over his right temple and his surcoat was spotted with blood. The Prince of Wales was shouting insults at the French, who were wheeling their horses away, going back through the tangled sprawl of dead and wounded. 'Archers!' The Earl called, then pulled the Prince back into the men-at-arms who were slowly lining themselves into formation. Two men were picking up fallen enemy lances to re-arm the front rank. 'Archers!' the Earl called again.

Will Skeat took his men back into their old position in front of the Earl. 'We're here, my lord.'

'You have arrows?'

'Some.'

'Enough?'

'Some,' Skeat stubbornly answered.

Thomas kicked a broken sword from under his feet. Two or three paces in front of him was a dead horse with flies crawling on its wide white eyes and over the glistening blood on its black nose. Its trapper was white and yellow, and the knight who had ridden the horse was pinned under the body. The man's visor was lifted. Many of the French and nearly all of the English men-at-arms fought with open visors and this dead man's eyes stared straight at Thomas, then suddenly blinked.

'Sweet Jesus,' Thomas swore, as if he had seen a ghost.

'Have pity,' the man whispered in French. 'For Christ's sake, have pity.'

Thomas could not hear him, for the air was filled with the drumbeat of hooves and the bray of trumpets. 'Leave them! They're beat!' Will Skeat bawled, for some of his men were about to draw their bows against those hors.e.m.e.n who had survived the first charge and had withdrawn to realign their ranks well within bowshot range. 'Wait!' Skeat shouted. 'Wait!'

Thomas looked to his left. There were dead men and horses for a mile along the slope, but it seemed the French had only broken through to the English line where he stood. Now they came again and he blinked away sweat and watched the charge come up the slope. They came slowly this time, keeping their discipline. One knight in the French front rank was wearing extravagant white and yellow plumes on his helmet, just as if he were in a tournament. That was a dead man, Thomas thought, for no archer could resist such a flamboyant target.

Thomas looked back at the carnage in front. Were there any English among the dead? It seemed impossible that there should not be, but he could see none. A Frenchman, an arrow deep in his thigh, was staggering in a circle among the corpses, then slumped to his knees. His mail was torn at his waist and his helmet's visor was hanging by a single rivet. For a moment, with his hands clasped over his sword's pommel, he looked just like a man at prayer, then he slowly fell forward. A wounded horse whinnied. A man tried to rise and Thomas saw the red cross of St George on his arm, and the red and yellow quarters of the Earl of Oxford on his jupon. So there were English casualties after all.

'Wait!' Will Skeat shouted, and Thomas looked up to see that the hors.e.m.e.n were closer, much closer. He drew the black bow. He had shot so many arrows that the two calloused string fingers of his right hand were actually sore, while the edge of his left hand had been rubbed raw by the flick of the goose feathers whipping across its skin. The long muscles of his back and arms were sore. He was thirsty. 'Wait!' Skeat shouted again, and Thomas relaxed the string a few inches. The close order of the second charge had been broken by the bodies of the crossbowmen, but the hors.e.m.e.n were re-forming now and were well within bow range. But Will Skeat, knowing how few arrows he had, wanted them all to count. 'Aim true, boys,' he called. 'We've no steel to waste now, so aim true! Kill the d.a.m.ned horses.' The bows stretched to their full extent and the string bit like fire into Thomas's sore fingers.

'Now!' Skeat shouted and a new flight of arrows skimmed the slope, this time with red feathers among the white. Jake's bowstring snapped and he cursed as he fumbled for a replacement. A second flight whipped away, its feathers hissing in the air, and then the third arrows were on the string as the first flight struck. Horses screamed and reared. The riders flinched and then drove back spurs as if they understood that the quickest way to escape the arrows was to ride down the archers. Thomas shot again and again, not thinking now, just looking for a horse, leading it with the steel arrowhead, then releasing. He drew out a white-feathered arrow and saw blood on the quills and knew his bow fingers were bleeding for the first time since he had been a child. He shot again and again until his fingers were raw flesh and he was almost weeping from the pain, but the second charge had lost all its cohesion as the barbed points tortured the horses and the riders encountered the corpses left by the first attack. The French were stalled, unable to ride into the arrow flail, but unwilling to retreat. Horses and men fell, the drums beat on and the rearward hors.e.m.e.n were pus.h.i.+ng the front ranks into the b.l.o.o.d.y ground where the pits waited and the arrows stung. Thomas shot another arrow, watched the red feathers whip into a horse's breast, then fumbled in the arrow bag to find just one shaft left. He swore.

'Arrows?' Sam called, but no one had any to spare.

Thomas shot his last, then turned to find a gap in the men-at-arms that would let him escape the hors.e.m.e.n who would surely come now the arrows had run out, but there were no gaps.

He felt a heartbeat of pure terror. There was no escape and the French were coming. Then, almost without thinking, he put his right hand under the horn tip of the bow and launched it high over the English men-at-arms so it would fall behind them. The bow was an enc.u.mbrance now, so he would be rid of it, and he picked up a fallen s.h.i.+eld, hoping to G.o.d it showed an English insignia, and pushed his left forearm into the tight loops. He drew his sword and stepped back between two of the lances held by the men-at-arms. Other archers were doing the same.

'Let the archers in!' the Earl of Northampton shouted. 'Let them in!' But the men-at-arms were too fearful of the rapidly approaching French to open their files.

'Ready!' a man shouted. 'Ready!' There was a note of hysteria in his voice. The French hors.e.m.e.n, now that the arrows were exhausted, were streaming up the slope between the corpses and the pits. Their lances were lowered and their spurs raked back as they demanded a last spurt from the horses before they struck the enemy. The trappers were flecked with mud and hung with arrows. Thomas watched a lance, held the unfamiliar s.h.i.+eld high and thought how monstrous the enemy's steel faces looked.

'You'll be all right, lad.' A quiet voice spoke behind him. 'Hold the s.h.i.+eld high and go for the horse.'

Thomas s.n.a.t.c.hed a look and saw it was the grey-haired Reginald Cobham, the old champion himself, standing in the front rank.

'Brace yourselves!' Cobham shouted.

The horses were on top of them, vast and high, lances reaching, the noise of the hooves and the rattle of mail overwhelming. Frenchmen were shouting victory as they leaned into the lunge.

'Now kill them!' Cobham shouted.

The lances struck the s.h.i.+elds and Thomas was hurled back and a hoof thumped his shoulder, but a man behind pushed him upright so he was forced hard against the enemy horse. He had no room to use the sword and the s.h.i.+eld was crushed against his side. There was the stench of horse sweat and blood in his nostrils. Something struck his helmet, making his skull ring and vision darken, then miraculously the pressure was gone and he glimpsed a patch of daylight and staggered into it, swinging the sword to where he thought the enemy was. 's.h.i.+eld up!' a voice screamed and he instinctively obeyed, only to have the s.h.i.+eld battered down, but his dazed vision was sharpening and he could see a bright-coloured trapper and a mailed foot in a big leather stirrup close to his left. He rammed his sword through the trapper and into the horse's guts and the beast twisted away. Thomas was dragged along by the trapped blade, but managed to give it a violent tug that jerked it free so sharply that its recoil struck an English s.h.i.+eld.

The charge had not broken the line, but had broken against it like a sea wave striking a cliff. The horses recoiled and the English men-at-arms advanced to hack at the hors.e.m.e.n who were relinquis.h.i.+ng lances to draw their swords. Thomas was pushed aside by the men-at-arms. He was panting, dazed and sweat-blinded. His head was a blur of pain. An archer was lying dead in front of him, head crushed by a hoof. Why had the man no helmet? Then the men-at-arms were reeling back as more hors.e.m.e.n filed through the dead to thicken the fight, all of them pus.h.i.+ng towards the Prince of Wales's high banner. Thomas banged his s.h.i.+eld hard into a horse's face, felt a glancing blow on his sword and skewered the blade down the horse's flank. The rider was fighting a man on the other side of his horse and Thomas saw a small gap between the saddle's high pommel and the man's mail skirt, and he shoved the sword up into the Frenchman's belly, heard the man's angry roar turn into a shriek, then saw the horse was falling towards him. He scrambled clear, pus.h.i.+ng a man out of his path before the horse collapsed in a crash of armour and beating hooves. English men-at-arms swarmed over the dying beast, going to meet the next enemy. A horse with an iron garro deep in its haunch was rearing and striking with its hooves. Another horse tried to bite Thomas and he struck it with the s.h.i.+eld, then flailed at its rider with his sword, but the man wheeled away and Thomas looked desperately for the next enemy.

'No prisoners!' the Earl screamed, seeing a man trying to lead a Frenchman out of the melee. The Earl had discarded his s.h.i.+eld and was wielding his sword with both hands, hacking it like a woodman's axe and daring any Frenchman to come and challenge him. They dared. More and more hors.e.m.e.n pushed into the horror; there seemed no end of them. The sky was bright with flags and streaked with steel, the gra.s.s was gouged by iron and slick with blood. A Frenchman rammed the bottom edge of his s.h.i.+eld down onto an Englishman's helmet, wheeled the horse, lunged a sword into an archer's back, wheeled again and struck down at the man still dazed by the s.h.i.+eld blow. 'Montjoie St Denis! 'Montjoie St Denis!' he shouted.

'St George!' The Earl of Northampton, visor up and face streaked with blood, rammed his sword through a gap in a chanfron to take a horse's eye. The beast reared and its rider fell to be trampled by a horse behind. The Earl looked for the Prince and could not see him, then could not search more, for a fresh conroi with white crosses on black s.h.i.+elds was forging through the melee, pus.h.i.+ng friend and foe alike from their path as they carried their lances towards the Prince's standard.

Thomas saw a baffled lance coming at him and he threw himself to the ground where he curled into a ball and let the heavy horses crash by.

'Montjoie St Denis! ' the voices yelled above him as the Count of Astarac's conroi struck home. ' the voices yelled above him as the Count of Astarac's conroi struck home.

Sir Guillaume d'Evecque had seen nothing like it. He hoped he never saw it again. He saw a great army breaking itself against a line of men on foot.

It was true that the battle was not lost and Sir Guillaume had convinced himself it could yet be won, but he was also aware of an unnatural sluggishness in himself. He liked war. He loved the release of battle, he relished imposing his will on an enemy and he had ever profited from combat, yet he suddenly knew he did not want to charge up the hill. There was a doom in this place, and he pushed that thought away and kicked his spurs back. 'Montjoie St Denis!' 'Montjoie St Denis!' he shouted, but knew he was just pretending the enthusiasm. No one else in the charge seemed afflicted by doubts. The knights were beginning to jostle each other as they strove to aim their lances at the English line. Very few arrows were flying now, and none at all were coming from the chaos ahead where the Prince of Wales's banner flew so high. Hors.e.m.e.n were now charging home all along the line, hacking at the English ranks with swords and axe, but more and more men were angling across the slope to join the fury on the English right. It was there, Sir Guillaume told himself, that the battle would be won and the English broken. It would be hard work, of course, and b.l.o.o.d.y work, hacking through the prince's troops, but once the French hors.e.m.e.n were in the rear of the English line it would collapse like rotted wood, and no amount of reinforcements from the top of the hill could stop that panicked rout. So fight, he told himself, fight, but there was still the nagging fear that he was riding into disaster. He had never felt anything like it and he hated it, cursing himself for being a coward! he shouted, but knew he was just pretending the enthusiasm. No one else in the charge seemed afflicted by doubts. The knights were beginning to jostle each other as they strove to aim their lances at the English line. Very few arrows were flying now, and none at all were coming from the chaos ahead where the Prince of Wales's banner flew so high. Hors.e.m.e.n were now charging home all along the line, hacking at the English ranks with swords and axe, but more and more men were angling across the slope to join the fury on the English right. It was there, Sir Guillaume told himself, that the battle would be won and the English broken. It would be hard work, of course, and b.l.o.o.d.y work, hacking through the prince's troops, but once the French hors.e.m.e.n were in the rear of the English line it would collapse like rotted wood, and no amount of reinforcements from the top of the hill could stop that panicked rout. So fight, he told himself, fight, but there was still the nagging fear that he was riding into disaster. He had never felt anything like it and he hated it, cursing himself for being a coward!

A dismounted French knight, his helmet's face-piece torn away and blood dripping from a hand holding a broken sword, while his other hand gripped the remnants of a s.h.i.+eld that had been split into two, staggered down the hill, then dropped to his knees and vomited. A riderless horse, stirrups flapping, galloped white-eyed across the line of the charge with its torn trapper trailing in the gra.s.s. The turf here was flecked by the white feathers of fallen arrows that looked like a field of flowers.

'Go! Go! Go!' Sir Guillaume shouted at his men, and knew he was shouting at himself. He would never tell men to go on a battlefield, but to come, to follow, and he cursed himself for using the word and stared ahead, looking for a victim for his lance, and he watched for the pits and tried to ignore the melee that was just to his right. He planned to widen the melee by boring into the English line where it was still lightly engaged. Die a hero, he told himself, carry the d.a.m.ned lance right up the hill and let no man ever say that Sir Guillaume d'Evecque was a coward.

Then a great cheer sounded from his right and he dared look there, away from the pits. He saw the Prince of Wales's great banner was toppling into the struggling men. The French were cheering and Sir Guillaume's gloom lifted magically for it was a French banner that pressed ahead, going over the place where the Prince's flag had flown, and then Sir Guillaume saw the banner. He saw it and stared at it. He saw a yale holding a cup and he pressed his knee to turn his horse and shouted at his men to follow him. 'To war!' he shouted. To kill. And there was no more sluggishness and no more doubts. For Sir Guillaume had found his enemy.

The King saw the enemy knights with the white-crossed s.h.i.+elds pierce his son's battle and then he watched his son's banner fall. He could not see his son's black armour. Nothing showed on his face.

'Let me go!' the Bishop of Durham demanded.

The King brushed a horsefly from his horse's neck. 'Pray for him,' he instructed the bishop.

'What the h.e.l.l use will prayer be?' the bishop demanded, and hefted his fearful mace. 'Let me go, sire!'