Bernard Cornwell - 1356 (Special Edition)

‘As good as any.’

‘Boys! Have some target practice! Kill some trees, all right? Don’t aim at the men or horses, just frighten the bastards away.’

The French had divided into two files, which were now coming faster down the hill, picking their way through the thick trees as the riders ducked under branches. Sam shot the first arrow. The fledging flickered white against the leaves, then buried itself in the trunk of an oak. Five more arrows followed. One struck a branch and tumbled, the others slammed hard into bark, and the closest was no more than two paces from a French horseman.

Who abruptly curbed his horse.

‘Another shot each!’ Sir Reginald called. ‘Just a few paces short of them, boys. Let them know you’re here and you’re hungry!’

The bows shot again, the arrows flew to thud into trees with appalling force and the Frenchmen turned away. One waved genially towards Sir Reginald, who waved back. ‘Thank God for archers,’ he said. He watched the Frenchmen push back up the hill until they were out of sight.

‘Sam,’ Thomas called, ‘fetch the arrows back.’ He had resupplied his men with arrows from the prince’s baggage train, but there were never enough.

‘I want you to stay here,’ Sir Reginald said. ‘All night. I’ll send the rest of your men down to join you. Do you have a trumpeter?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll send one. Stay here, and sound the alarm if the French come back in force. But keep them away if they do come. If they see the wagons close to the ford they’ll guess what we’re doing.’

‘Retreating?’ Thomas asked.

Sir Reginald shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ He frowned and gazed blankly northwards as if trying to gauge what the enemy might do. ‘The prince thinks we should keep marching. He’s given orders that tomorrow morning, first thing, we cross the river and march south as if the devil himself was at our heels. A French attack would stop that, of course, but my guess is they won’t attack at first light. They’ll need at least two hours to draw their army up, and I want the wagons gone before they even know we were here, and then the rest of the army can slip over the river and steal a day’s march.’ He kicked his horse out of the ford, back onto the track that crossed the marsh. ‘But who knows what those goddamned churchmen are proposing? If we could have joined Lancaster …’ He let that thought trail away.

‘Lancaster?’

‘The idea was to join the Earl of Lancaster and make havoc in northern France, but we couldn’t cross the Loire. And nothing’s gone right since then, and now we’re trying to get back to Gascony without the bloody French killing us. So stay here till dawn!’

To help an army escape.

The Captal de Buch took twenty men-at-arms northwards. They rode past the Earl of Salisbury’s men who guarded the northern end of the ridge. Most of the earl’s men were arrayed beyond the northern end of the protective hedge and so his archers were busy digging and disguising pits to break the legs of charging horses. A bowman guided the captal and his men past the pits, and once past the traps the captal could look back and see the cardinals and churchmen who were attempting to forge a peace. They and the French negotiators had met the English emissaries in the open fields, just beneath the vineyard. Someone had brought benches to the place and the men were sitting and talking, while heralds and men-at-arms waited a few paces away. There was no tent or awning. A single banner was planted behind the churchmen. It showed the crossed keys of Saint Peter, a sign that a Papal Legate was present.

‘What are they talking about?’ one of the captal’s men asked.

‘They’re trying to delay us,’ the captal said, ‘they want to keep us here. They want us to starve.’

‘I hear the Pope sent them. Maybe they want peace?

‘The Pope shits French turds,’ the captal said curtly, ‘and the only peace he wants is to see us in his chamber pot.’ He turned away and led his Gascons down the long slope that dropped gently to the north. They were heading into a tangled landscape of woods, vineyards, hedges, and hills, and somewhere in that tangle was a French army, but no one was quite certain where it was or how big it was. It was certainly close. The captal could tell it was close because the smoke of French cooking fires was thick on the northern skyline, but the prince had asked him to try to discover just where the enemy was camped and how many they were, and so he spurred down the slope, keeping now in the shelter of the trees. Neither he nor his men were mounted on their great destriers, the trained war horses that went into battle, but on coursers, fast light horses that could speed them out of trouble. The men wore mail, but not plate, and had helmets and swords, but no shields. They were Gascons and that meant they were accustomed to perpetual war, to countering French raids or making raids themselves. They rode in silence. There was a cart track to their left, but they stayed away from it, keeping hidden. They slowed when they reached the foot of the slope, for now they were well beyond English bowshot and if the French had posted sentinels then they could be anywhere among these trees.

The captal gestured to spread his men out, then gestured again to signal them forward. They went very slowly, searching the woods ahead for a movement that might betray a hidden crossbowman. They saw nothing. They were climbing through thick woods, and still there was no sign of the enemy. The captal stopped. Was he being lured into a trap? He waved a hand indicating that his men should wait where they were, and he swung out of the saddle and went alone on foot. The slope was not steep and he could see the crest not far ahead. Surely that was a place to put sentinels? He was moving quietly, furtively, watching for the flight of a bird, but for all his caution he sensed he was alone. He watched the skyline for a moment, then moved on up to the crest and suddenly he could see far to the north and west.

He crouched.

The main French encampment was only half a mile away, the tents clustered about a village and a manor, but what interested him was the sight of men going west. They would be invisible to the English on their hill, but the captal could see that the French forces were being led around to the west and south, curling closer to the river. They were not in battle order, indeed they were in no order that he could see, but they were undeniably moving westwards. It looked to him as if they were going to the flat-topped hill, to le Champ d’Alexandre. He could not count them, they were too many and there was too much dead ground. Eighty-seven banners, he remembered.

He backed away, stood, and went to his horse. He mounted, turned and waved his men southwards again. They rode fast now, sure that no enemy was within sight or earshot, and the captal wondered if the French would keep the truce.

But of two things he was sure. The enemy were readying to attack, and the attack would come from the west.

The Earls of Warwick and Suffolk came back to the prince’s tent in the late afternoon. They sat wearily when the prince offered them chairs, then drank the wine that his servant brought. All the prince’s advisers were there, all waiting for the results of the long negotiations to be announced.

‘The terms are these, sire,’ the Earl of Warwick spoke flatly. ‘We must return all the land, fortresses and towns captured in the last three years. We must yield all the plunder in our baggage train. We must release all prisoners held here or in England without further payment of ransom. And we are to pay France an indemnity of sixty-six thousand pounds to compensate for the destruction we have wrought over the years.’

‘Dear God,’ the prince said faintly.