Ken Follett - World Without End

For a long time it seemed the fight could go either way. If she had been at home, hearing news of the war from afar, she might have hoped for an English victory, but after what she had seen in the last two weeks she felt a sort of disgusted neutrality. She could not identify with the English who had murdered peasants and burned their crops, and it made no difference to her that they had committed these atrocities in Normandy. Of course, they would say the French deserved what they got because they had burned Portsmouth, but that was a stupid way to think – so stupid that it led to scenes of horror such as this.

The French retreated, and she assumed they would regroup and reorganize, and wait for the king to arrive to develop a new battle plan. They still had overwhelming superiority in numbers, she could see: there were tens of thousands of troops in the valley, with more still arriving.

But the French did not regroup. Instead, every new battalion that arrived went straight into the attack, throwing themselves suicidally up the hill at the English position. The second and subsequent charges fared worse than the first. Some were cut down by archers even before they reached the English lines; the rest were beaten off by foot soldiers. The slope below the ridge became shiny with the gushing blood of hundreds of men and horses.

After the first charge, Caris looked only occasionally at the battle. She was too busy tending those French wounded who were lucky enough to be able to leave the field. Martin Chirurgien had realized that she was as good a surgeon as he. Giving her free access to his instruments, he left her and Mair to work independently. They washed, sewed and bandaged hour after hour.

News of prominent casualties came back to them from the front line. Charles of Alençon was the first high-ranking fatality. Caris could not help feeling that he deserved his fate. She had witnessed his foolish enthusiasm and careless indiscipline. Hours later, King Jean of Bohemia was reported dead, and she wondered what madness drove a blind man to battle.

“In God’s name, why don’t they stop?” she said to Martin when he brought her a cup of ale to refresh her.

“Fear,” he replied. “They’re scared of disgrace. To leave the field without striking a blow would be shameful. They would prefer to die.”

“A lot of them have had that wish granted,” said Caris grimly, and she emptied her tankard and went back to work. Her knowledge and understanding of the human body was growing by leaps and bounds, she reflected. She saw inside every part of a living man: the brains beneath shattered skulls, the pipework of the throat, the muscles of the arms sliced open, the heart and lungs within smashed ribcages, the slimy tangle of the intestines, the articulation of the bones at hip and knee and ankle. She discovered more in an hour on the battlefield than in a year at the priory hospital. This was how Matthew Barber had learned so much, she realized. No wonder he was confident.

The carnage continued until night fell. The English lit torches, afraid of a sneak attack under cover of darkness. But Caris could have told them they were safe. The French were routed. She could hear the calls of French soldiers searching the battlefield for fallen kinsmen and comrades. The king, who had arrived in time to join one of the last hopeless charges, left the field. After that the exit became general.

A fog came up from the river, filling the valley and obscuring the distant flares. Once again, Caris and Mair worked by firelight long into the night, patching up the wounded. All those who could walk or hobble left as soon as they could, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the English, hoping to avoid tomorrow’s inevitable bloodthirsty mopping-up operation. When Caris and Mair had done all they could for the victims, they slipped away.

This was their chance.

They located their ponies and led them forward by the light of a burning torch. They reached the bottom of the valley and found themselves in no-man’s-land. Hidden by fog and darkness, they slipped out of their boys’ clothing. For a moment they were terribly vulnerable, two naked women in the middle of a battlefield. But no one could see them, and a second later they were pulling their nuns’ robes over their heads. They packed up their male garments in case they should need them again: it was a long way home.

Caris decided to abandon the torch, in case an English archer should take it into his head to shoot at the light and ask questions afterwards. Holding hands so that they would not get separated they went forward, still leading the horses. They could see nothing: the fog obscured whatever light might have come from moon or stars. They headed uphill towards the English lines. There was a smell like a butcher’s shop. So many bodies of horses and men covered the ground that they could not walk around them. They had to grit their teeth and step on the corpses. Soon their shoes were covered with a mixture of mud and blood.

The bodies on the ground thinned out, and soon there were none. Caris began to feel a deep sense of relief as she approached the English army. She and Mair had travelled hundreds of miles, lived rough for two weeks, and risked their lives for this moment. She had almost forgotten the outrageous theft by Prior Godwyn of one hundred and fifty pounds from the nuns’ treasury – the reason for her journey. Somehow it seemed less important after all this bloodshed. Still, she would appeal to Bishop Richard and win justice for the nunnery.

The walk seemed farther than Caris had imagined when she had looked across the valley in daylight. She wondered nervously if she had become disoriented. She might have turned in the wrong direction and just walked straight past the English. Perhaps the army was now behind her. She strained to hear some noise – ten thousand men could not be silent, even if most of them had fallen into exhausted sleep – but the fog muffled sound.

She clung to the conviction that, as King Edward had positioned his forces on the highest land, she must be approaching him as long as she was walking uphill. But the blindness was unnerving. If there had been a precipice, she would have stepped right over it.

The light of dawn was turning the fog to the colour of pearl when at last she heard a voice. She stopped. It was a man speaking in a low murmur. Mair squeezed her hand nervously. Another man spoke. She could not make out the language. She feared that she might have walked full circle and arrived back on the French side.

She turned towards the voice, still holding Mair’s hand. The red glow of flames became visible through the grey mist, and she headed for it gratefully. As she came nearer, she heard the talk more clearly, and realized with immense relief that the men were speaking English. A moment later she made out a group of men around a fire. Several lay asleep, rolled in blankets, but three sat upright, legs crossed, looking into the flames, talking. A moment later Caris saw a man standing, peering into the fog, presumably on sentry duty, though the fact that he had not noticed her approach proved his job was impossible.

To get their attention, Caris said in a low voice: “God bless you, men of England.”

She startled them. One gave a shout of fear. The sentry said belatedly: “Who goes there?”

“Two nuns from Kingsbridge Priory,” Caris said. The men stared at her in superstitious dread, and she realized they thought she might be an apparition. “Don’t worry, we’re flesh and blood, and so are these ponies.”

“Did you say Kingsbridge?” said one of them in surprise. “I know you,” he said, standing up. “I’ve seen you before.”

Caris recognized him. “Lord William of Caster,” she said.

“I am the earl of Shiring, now,” he said. “My father died of his wounds an hour ago.”