bastards who have to die.’ Men thought of their wives, children, whores, mothers. Small boys carried sheaves of arrows to the archers who were concentrated at the ends of the line.
The prince watched the western hill and saw no one there. Were the French sleeping? ‘Are we ready?’ he asked Sir Reginald Cobham.
‘Say the word, sire, and we go.’
What the prince wanted to do was one of the most difficult things any commander could attempt. He wanted to escape while the enemy was close. He had heard nothing from the cardinals and he had to assume the French would attack, so his troops would need to hold them off while the baggage and the vanguard crossed the Miosson and marched away. If he could do it, if he could get his baggage across the river and then retreat, step by step, always fending off the enemy attacks, then he could steal a whole day’s march, maybe two, but the danger, the awful danger, was that the French would trap half his army on one bank and destroy it, then pursue the other half and slaughter that too. The prince must fight and retreat, fight and retreat, holding the enemy at bay with a dwindling number of men. It was a risk that made him make the sign of the cross, then he nodded to Sir Reginald Cobham. ‘Go,’ he said, ‘get the baggage moving!’ The decision was made; the dice were rolled. ‘And you, my lord,’ he turned to the Earl of Warwick, ‘your men will guard the crossing place?’
‘We will, sire.’
‘Then God be with you.’
The earl and Sir Reginald galloped their horses south, and the prince, glorious in his royal colours and mounted on a tall black horse, followed more slowly. His handsome face was framed in steel. His helmet was ringed with gold and crested with three ostrich feathers. He paused every few yards and spoke to the waiting men. ‘We will probably fight today! And we shall do in this place what we did together at Crecy! God is on our side; Saint George watches over us! And you will stay in line! You hear that? No man will break the line! You see a naked whore in the enemy ranks you leave her there! If you break ranks the enemy will break us! Stay in line! Saint George is with us!’ Again and again he repeated the words. Stay in line. Don’t break the line. Obey your commanders! Stay together, shield to shield. Let the enemy come to us. Do not break the line!
‘Sire!’ A messenger galloped from the line’s centre where there was a great gap in the thick hedge. ‘The cardinal is coming!’
‘Meet him, find what he wants!’ the prince said, then turned back to his men. ‘You stay in line! You stay with your neighbour! You do not leave the ranks! Shield next to shield!’
The Earl of Salisbury brought the news that the cardinal was offering a further five days of truce. ‘In five days we starve,’ the prince retorted, ‘and he knows it.’ The army had run out of food for men and horses and the presence of the enemy meant that no forage parties could search the nearby countryside. ‘He’s just doing the French king’s bidding,’ the prince said, ‘so tell him to go say his prayers and leave us alone. We’re in God’s hands now.’
The church’s mission had failed. Archers strung their bows. The sun was almost above the horizon and the sky was filled with a great pale light. ‘Stay in line! You will not leave the ranks! Do you hear me? Stay in line!’
Beneath the hill, beside the river where the shadows of the night still lingered, the first wagons moved towards the ford.
Because the army would escape.
PART FOUR
The axles squealed like pigs being slaughtered at winter’s onset. The carts, wagons and wains, of which no two were alike, lurched on the rough track that led along the river’s northern bank. Most were piled high, though with what it was impossible to tell because rough cloth was strapped over the loads. ‘Plunder,’ Sam said, sounding disapproving.
‘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.
