Bernard Cornwell - 1356 (Special Edition)

‘This isn’t a tournament.’ Roland spoke for the first time. He had turned his horse, abandoned his lance and drawn the sword he called Durandal, and he rode back to where Langier was struggling to extricate himself from his fallen, dying horse. Langier tried to find his mace, but the horse had fallen on the weapon, and then Durandal smacked across his helm. His head was jerked violently to one side, then to the other as the sword came back to smash the helmet again.

‘Take your helmet off,’ Roland said.

‘Go and piss in your mother’s arsehole, virgin.’

The sword swiped him again, half dazing Langier, then the point of the sword was thrust between the visor’s upper edge and the helmet’s rim. The blade bit into the bridge of Langier’s nose, and stopped. ‘If you want to live,’ Roland said calmly, ‘take the helmet off.’ He pulled the sword free.

Langier fumbled at the buckles that held the helmet in place. The other champions watched, but made no effort to help. They were there to fight man against man, not two men against one because that would be unchivalrous, and so they just watched as Langier at last lifted the helmet clear of his lank black hair. A trickle of blood ran down his face from where Durandal had cut him.

‘Go back to your army,’ Roland said, ‘and tell Labrouillade that the virgin is going to kill him.’

It was Langier’s turn to say nothing.

Roland turned his horse away, sheathed Durandal, and kicked back his heels. He had delivered his message. He heard cheers from the Englishmen who had seen the fight through the hedge’s gap, but it meant nothing to him.

It was all for Bertille.

The Lord of Douglas would kill no Englishmen this day. His leg had been broken when his horse fell, his arm was pierced to the bone by an arrow, and another had broken a rib and punctured a lung so that he was breathing bubbles of blood. He was in pain, horrible pain, and he was carried to the house where the king had spent the night, and there the barber-surgeons stripped him of his armour, cut the arrow flush with his skin, leaving the head embedded in his chest, and poured honey onto the wound. ‘Find a cart and take him to Poitiers,’ one of the surgeons ordered a retainer wearing the red heart. ‘The monks of Saint Jean will care for him. Take him slowly. Imagine you’re carrying milk and don’t want it turning to butter. Go. If you want him to see Scotland again, go!’

‘You can take him to the bloody monks,’ Sculley said to his companions, ‘I’m going to fight. I’m going to kill.’

More men were being carried to the house. They had charged with Marshal Clermont, attacking the archers at the right of the English line, but there the enemy had dug trenches and the horses floundered, others had broken their legs in pits, and all the while the arrows had struck, and the charge had failed as miserably as the attack in the marsh.

But now that the champions had flaunted their defiance and Langier had been unhorsed in full view of the French army, the main assault was closing on the English hill. The dauphin led the first French battle, though he was well protected by chosen knights from his father’s Order of the Star. The dauphin’s battle was over three thousand strong and they came on foot, kicking down the chestnut stakes of the vineyard and trampling the vines as they climbed the gentle slope towards the English hill. Banners flew above them, while behind them, on the western hill, the oriflamme flew proudly from the ranks the king commanded. That flag, the long, twin-tailed banner of scarlet silk, was France’s battle-flag and so long as it flew it meant that no prisoners were to be taken. Capturing rich men for ransom was the dream of every knight, but at a battle’s beginning, when all that mattered was to break the enemy and shatter him and kill him and terrify him, there was no time for the niceties of surrender. When the flag was furled, that was when the French could look to their purses, but till then there would be no prisoners, only killing. So the oriflamme flew, waved from side to side like a ripple of red in the morning sky, and behind the dauphin’s battle his uncle’s second battle was advancing towards the valley’s shallow bottom where the nakerers beat their vast drums in a marching rhythm to drive the dauphin’s men uphill to a famous victory.

To the English and Gascons, at least to those who could see past the hedge, the far hill and the nearer valley were now filled with the panoply of war. With silk and steel, with plumes and blades. A mass of metal-clad men in bright surcoats of red and blue and white and green, marching beneath the proud banners of nobility. Drums hammered the morning air, trumpets seared the sky, and the advancing Frenchmen cheered, not because they had a victory yet, but to raise their spirits and frighten the enemy. ‘Montjoie Saint Denis!’ they shouted. ‘Montjoie Saint Denis and King Jean!’

Crossbowmen were on the French flanks. Each archer had a companion who carried a great pavise, a shield large as a man behind which the crossbow could be rewound safe from the deadly English arrows. Those arrows were not flying yet. The leading men of the French advance could see the great hedge, and the wide gaps, and through those gaps were the English beneath their banners. The French visors were up and would stay up till the arrows came. The men in the foremost ranks were all in plate armour and most of those men did not carry shields; only the men who could not afford the expensive plate carried a willow shield. Some advanced with shortened lances, hoping to thrust an Englishman off balance and let another man kill the fallen enemy with axe or mace or morningstar. Few men carried swords. A sword would neither thrust nor cut through armour. An armoured man must be beaten down by lead-weighted weapons, beaten and crushed and pulped.

The dauphin did not shout. He insisted on being in the very front rank, though he was not a strong man like his father. Prince Charles was thin, weak-limbed, long-nosed, with skin so pale it looked like bleached parchment, and with legs so short and arms so long that some courtiers called him le singe behind his back, but the ape was a clever young ape, a judicious ape, and he knew that he must lead. He must be seen to lead. He wore a suit of armour made for him in Milan and burnished with sand and vinegar until it reflected the sun in dazzling shards of light. His breastplate was covered by a blue jupon on which fleurs-de-lys were embroidered in golden threads, while in his right hand was a sword. His father had insisted he learn to fight with a sword, but he had never mastered the weapon. Squires six years younger could beat him in mock combat, which was why the knights who flanked him were men seasoned in fighting and carrying heavy shields to protect the prince’s life.

‘We should have let them starve,’ the dauphin said as they neared the hedge.

‘Sire?’ a man shouted, unable to hear the dauphin’s voice over the sound of drums, trumpets and cheers.

‘They have a strong position!’

‘All the more glory when we beat them, sire.’

The dauphin thought that remark stupid, but he held his tongue, and just then a flicker of white caught his eye and the man who had made the stupid remark reached over and slammed down the prince’s visor so hard that the dauphin was momentarily deafened and half stunned. ‘Arrows, sire!’ the man shouted.

The arrows were being shot from the ends of the hedge, slantwise across the advancing battle. More arrows came from small groups of archers who guarded the gaps in the hedge. The dauphin heard the missiles thumping into shields or clanging on armour. He could hardly see now. The visor had bars close together, his world was dark, sliced by bright sunlit slits, and he sensed, rather than saw, that the men about him had speeded up. They were closing ranks in front of him and he was too weak to force his way past them.