Bernard Cornwell - 1356 (Special Edition)

‘The terms are clear,’ the king said, ‘and I am not inclined to accept them.’

‘You proposed the terms, sire,’ Talleyrand said respectfully.

‘And they accepted them too easily. That suggests they’re frightened. That they have cause to be frightened.’

‘With respect, sire,’ Marshal Arnoul d’Audrehem intervened. He was fifty, wise in war, and wary of the archers in the enemy army. ‘Every day they linger on that hilltop, sire, weakens them. Every day increases their fear.’

‘They’re frightened and weak now,’ Jean de Clermont, the second marshal of the French army, said. ‘They’re sheep to be slaughtered.’ He sneered at his fellow marshal. ‘You’re just afraid of them.’

‘If we fight,’ d’Audrehem said, ‘you’ll be staring at my horse’s arse.’

‘Enough!’ King Jean snapped. Men feared his notorious temper and fell silent. The king frowned at a servant who carried a pile of jupons over his arm. ‘How many?’

‘Seventeen, sire.’

‘Give them to men in the Order of the Star.’ He turned and looked at the window where the faintest light showed in the east. The king already wore a jupon of blue cloth decorated with golden fleurs-de-lys, and the seventeen coats the servant carried were identical. If there was to be a battle then let the enemy be confused as to who was the king, and the men in the Order of the Star were among the greatest fighters of France. It was King Jean’s own order of chivalry, an answer to England’s Order of the Garter, and today the Knights of the Star would protect their monarch. ‘If the English are stupid enough to accept a few days more on the hilltop, so be it,’ he told Talleyrand.

‘So I may extend the truce?’ the cardinal asked.

‘See what they say,’ the king said and waved Talleyrand away. ‘If they beg for time,’ he told the men remaining in the room, ‘it means they’re scared.’

‘Scared men are easily beaten,’ Marshal Clermont observed.

‘Oh, we’ll beat them,’ King Jean said, and felt a flutter of nervousness about the decision he had made.

‘So we fight, sire?’ the Lord of Douglas asked. He was confused as to whether the king really meant to fight or extend the truce. All the men in the room had been awake half the night as armourers clad them in leather, mail and steel, and now the king was again flirting with the idea of a truce?

The king frowned at the question. He paused. He shifted his weight and scratched at his nose, then reluctantly nodded. ‘We fight,’ he said.

‘Thank God,’ Clermont muttered.

The Lord of Douglas went to one knee. ‘Then with your permission, sire, I would ride with Marshal d’Audrehem.’

‘You?’ The king sounded surprised. ‘You’re the one who told me to fight on foot!’

‘I shall indeed fight on foot, sire, and take pleasure in beating your enemies into bloody pulp, but I would ride with the marshal first.’

‘So be it,’ the king allowed. The French feared the enemy archers and so they had assembled five hundred knights whose horses were elaborately armoured, heavy with mail, plate, and leather. Those great destriers, protected from arrows, would charge the archers on the English flanks, and when the horsemen had scattered the bowmen and beaten them down with axes, swords and lances, the rest of the army would advance on foot. ‘When the archers are dead you will join Prince Charles,’ the king commanded Douglas.

‘I am honoured, sire, and I thank you.’

The dauphin Charles, just eighteen years old, would command the first battle of French men-at-arms. Their job was to advance up the long slope and crash into the English and Gascon knights and slaughter them. The king’s brother, the Duke of Orléans, commanded the second line, while the king himself, along with his youngest son, would lead the rearmost troops. Three great battles, led by princes and a king, would assault the English, and they would attack on foot because horses, unless they were armoured like men, were too vulnerable to arrows.

‘Order all lances to be shortened,’ the king commanded. Men on foot could not wield long lances, so they must be cut down to manageable lengths. ‘And to your battles, gentlemen.’

The French were ready. The banners were flying. The king was armoured in the best steel Milan could make. It had taken four hours to clad the king in plate steel, each piece first blessed by the Bishop of Châlons before the armourers buckled, strapped or tied the item comfortably. His legs were protected by cuisses, by greaves, and by roundels over his knees, while his boots had scales of overlapping steel. He wore strips of steel fixed to a leather skirt, above which were his breast- and backplates, which were buckled tightly over a mail coat. Espaliers covered his shoulders, vambraces and rerebraces his arms, while his hands were in gauntlets that, like the boots, had scales of steel. His helmet had a snouted visor and was circled by a crown of gold, and over his body was a surcoat blazoned with the golden fleur-de-lys of France. The oriflamme was ready; the French were ready. This was a day to go into history, the day that France cut down its enemies.

The Lord of Douglas knelt for the bishop’s blessing. The Scotsman was still nervous that the king might change his mind, but he dared not ask questions in case those very queries made Jean cautious. Yet what Douglas did not know was that the king had received a sign from heaven. During the night, as the armourers had fussed and measured and tightened, the Cardinal Bessières had come to the king. He had dropped to his knees, grunting with the effort, and then looked up at the king. ‘Your Majesty,’ he had said, and offered with both hands a rusty, feeble-looking blade.

‘You’re giving me a peasant weapon, Your Eminence?’ the king had said, irritated that the fat cardinal had interrupted his preparations. ‘Or do you want me to reap some barley?’ he asked because the crude sword, its blade broader at its tip than at the base, looked like a grotesquely lengthened hay knife.

‘It is the sword of Saint Peter, Your Majesty,’ the cardinal had said, ‘given into our hands by the providence of God to ensure your great victory.’

The king had looked startled, then disbelieving, but the earnestness with which Bessières had spoken was reassuring. He had reached out and touched la Malice nervously, then held his finger on the pitted blade. ‘How can you be sure?’

‘I am sure, Majesty. The monks of Saint Junien were given guard of it, and they delivered it to us as a sign from God.’

‘It has been missing these many years,’ the Bishop of Châlons had said reverently, then knelt to the relic and kissed the pitted blade.

‘So it is real?’ the king had asked, amazed.

‘It is real,’ Bessières had replied, ‘and God has sent it to you. This is the sword that protected our Saviour and the man who possesses this sword cannot know defeat.’

‘Then God and Saint Denis be praised,’ the king had said, and he had taken the sword from the cardinal and touched it to his lips. The cardinal had watched, hiding his pleasure. The sword would bring victory, and victory would raise King Jean to be the mightiest monarch of Christendom, and when the Pope died the King of France would add his persuasion to the men who would advocate Bessières’s candidacy for the throne of Saint Peter. The king closed his eyes momentarily and kissed the blade a second time before returning it to the cardinal’s gloved hands.

‘With Your Highness’s permission,’ the cardinal had said, ‘I shall give this holy blade to a deserving champion so he can cut down your enemies.’

‘You have my permission,’ the king had said. ‘Give it to a man who will use it well!’ His voice was firm because the sight of the blade had given him a new confidence. He had been wanting a sign, some hint that God would grant France a victory, and now he had that sign. Victory was his. God had decreed it.