Bernard Cornwell - 1356 (Special Edition)

‘I wonder how many monasteries, castles, and churches went to filling that big wain,’ Thomas said as he watched the first wagon roll into the ford. It was hauled by four big horses and, to his relief, the cumbersome wagon crossed the river smoothly, the water scarce reaching the two axles.

‘It’s not just plunder from rich folk,’ Sam said, ‘they take anything! Spits, harrows, weed-hooks, cauldrons. I wouldn’t mind if they just took from rich folk, but if it’s metal it’ll be taken.’

A horseman wearing the Earl of Warwick’s golden lion badge spurred along the line of carts and wagons. ‘Faster!’ he shouted.

‘Mother of God,’ Sam said in disgust, ‘the poor bastards can’t go any quicker!’ The drivers had to turn their vehicles onto the ford and it was an awkward place for the largest wagons. ‘Slow and steady will do it.’

Scores of women and children walked beside the wagons. They were the camp followers every army attracted. One vast wain was driven by a woman. She was vast herself with a head of unruly brown curls on which a cap perched like a diminutive bird on a big nest. Two small boys were beside her, one holding a wooden sword and the other clinging to his mother’s ample skirts. Her wagon was heaped with plunder and decorated with ribbons of every colour. She grinned at Thomas and Sam. ‘He thinks the bloody Frenchies are coming for us!’ she said, jerking her head towards the horseman. She flicked her whip at one of the lead horses and the wagon went into the ford. ‘Hup, hup!’ she called. ‘Don’t you boys get left behind!’ she called merrily to Thomas’s archers, then shook the reins so that her four horses put their weight into their collars and hauled the wagon up to the far bank.

Some of the women and children rode in empty wagons that had carried food and fodder, all of it eaten, while other carts just carried empty barrels in which the precious arrows had been held by leather discs so that their feathers were not crushed. There were plenty of those wagons, their barrels reminding Thomas of his escape from Montpellier. ‘Keep going!’ the horseman shouted. He looked nervously over his shoulder, staring north up the rising valley that led between the English-held hill and le Champ d’Alexandre.

Thomas looked that way and saw banners moving on the English hill. They were coming towards him, mere flickers of colour at the crest. It was the Earl of Warwick’s men, marching to guard the river. So the retreat was happening. There had been no trumpet blasts, no seven long notes to herald a truce. Instead there would be a river to cross and, Thomas assumed, a long day keeping the French from interfering with the crossing.

‘Don’t goddamned dally, for Christ’s sake!’ the horseman shouted. He was annoyed because a heavily laden cart had paused at the place where the track turned, and so he spurred his horse alongside the two draught horses and slapped one of their rumps with the flat of his sword. The horse panicked, half reared, but was restrained by the harness. It twisted to the right and the other horse followed and both beasts bolted and the driver hauled on the reins, but the wagon bounced on the track, the horses tried to turn away from the river and the wagon slowly tipped over the causeway’s edge. The horses screamed. There was a crash as the whole wagon fell sideways to block the ford. Plundered cauldrons clattered into the marsh. ‘Jesus!’ the panicking horseman who had caused the trouble shouted. Only two dozen wagons had crossed the Miosson, and at least three times that number was now baulked on the wrong bank.

‘Jesus!’ Sam echoed. Not because the wagon had overturned, but because there were more banners in sight. Only these flags were not on the hill. They were in the wooded valley between the hills, a valley still shrouded in shadow because the sun had not yet reached it, and beneath the trees were flags and beneath the flags were horsemen. A mass of horsemen.

Coming to the river.

Marshal d’Audrehem and the Lord of Douglas led the heavily armoured horsemen whose task was to shatter the archers on the left wing of the English army. They had three hundred and twenty men, all of them experienced and renowned, all of them able to afford horse armour that could resist an English arrow. The destriers wore chamfrons, metal plates over their faces with holes for their eyes, while their chests were protected by leather, mail and even plate. The armour made the big horses slow, but almost invulnerable.

D’Audrehem and Douglas expected to attack across the valley and up the long slope towards the forest of Nouaillé, then skirt about the end of the hedge that protected and hid the enemy troops. They would walk their heavy horses across the valley, and walk up the slope, trusting to the armour to protect the great beasts. Once they had rounded the hedge they would spur the destriers into a lumbering gallop and so drive into the mass of English archers they expected to find. Maybe a thousand bowmen? And the big horses would carry them deep into that panicked mass where they would lay about with swords and axes. Destroy the archers, force them to run from the field, and then the horsemen would turn back to the French lines, dismount and take off their spurs, and then join the great attack that would fight on foot to hammer at the centre of the English army.

That was the plan of battle: to use the heavily armoured horse to destroy the English archers, then slaughter the men-at-arms, but as d’Audrehem and Douglas had led their men over the brow of the western hill they saw the tips of English banners beyond the hedge, and those banners were moving southwards.

‘What are the bastards doing?’ D’Audrehem asked the question of no one.

‘Escaping,’ Douglas answered anyway.

The eastern horizon was brightly lit by the rising sun and the forest was dark against that brightness, but the banners could be seen against the trees. There were a dozen flags, all of them moving southwards, and d’Audrehem looked that way and saw the glint of water in the depth of the valley. ‘Bastards are crossing the river!’ he said.

‘They’re running away,’ Douglas said.

Marshal d’Audrehem hesitated. He was fifty years old and had spent almost all his adult years as a soldier. He had fought in Scotland, where he had learned to kill Englishmen, and then in Brittany, Normandy, and at Calais. He knew war. He was not hesitating because he feared what was happening, but because he knew the plan of battle must change. If they charged the far hill, aiming for where they believed the English left wing lay, they would find men-at-arms, not archers, and his mounted knights had been ordered to destroy the hated enemy bowmen. So where were the archers?

‘There’s a ford down there,’ a man said, pointing to the glint of water.

‘You know that?’

‘I grew up not three miles from here, sire.’

‘We’ll go to the ford,’ d’Audrehem decided. He turned his horse, which was caparisoned in a great cloth that bore the broad blue and white diagonal stripes of his livery. He carried a shield with the same bright colours, and his visored helmet had one white plume and one blue. ‘This way!’ he called and led the horsemen southwards.

And this was easier than crossing the valley. Now, instead of pushing the heavy horses up the long slope of the English-held hill, they were riding downhill. They trotted. The horse armour clinked and jangled; the hooves thumped the dry turf. Some men carried lances, but most had swords. They were riding on open grassland, but ahead of them, where the valley dropped and widened into the larger valley of the Miosson, were trees, and beyond those trees d’Audrehem expected to find archers protecting the ford.

The Lord of Douglas was on the right where a dozen of his own Scotsmen joined him. ‘Drop your visors when you see an arrow,’ he reminded them, ‘and enjoy the killing!’ He would enjoy it. The sport of the Douglas clan was killing Englishmen, and Douglas felt a fierce joy at the prospect of battle. He had dreaded that the interfering churchmen would arrange an escape for this English army, but instead the negotiations had failed and he was released to cry havoc. ‘And remember! If you see my cursed nephew then he’s to live!’ He doubted that he would find Robbie in the chaos of battle, but he still wanted the boy taken alive. Taken alive and then made to suffer. ‘I want the little bastard alive and weeping! Remember that!’