Crown in Candlelight (25 page)

When they passed through the next deserted village the command came back to burn it, first warning any inhabitants who might have remained. In the thin frosty sunshine the army left this village and the next crumbling in a sea of flame. Dried dead leaves on the vines blazed under a black pall. Thus hoping to cover its passage, the army moved dispiritedly on. At night Owen went, against orders, down the drowsy lines of men to find John Page. He found him weeping, and sorry, gave him a blessing—‘
Duw bo gyda chi
’, and said, ‘Don’t lose hope, John.’

‘I was thinking—’ Page wiped his nose on his sleeve—‘of the woman from Harfleur, the one I gave my meat to.’

‘You can’t have it back,’ said Owen.

‘I didn’t mean that. I hadn’t realized what a mean foe hunger really is. I pray,’ he said, his voice trembling, ‘that the Almighty will take pity on his unfortunates. All of them. That the glorious Virgin will mediate for us …’

Owen, sicker and sadder than ever, went back to his place.

Onward north-west of Amiens, through Crouy and Picquigny the army struggled, bellies groaning from the diet of nuts and berries, the horses faltering and lean on snatched sour grass. A constant flow of quiet swearing accompanied the march; a litany of despair. The men drank brackish water from the streams. Weariness, the overpowering lust to lie down and sleep for longer than the few hours allowed, assailed them. Yet none of their curses were aimed at the King, for they felt that he too was a victim of these fates, this eternal ambushed hopeless march. And at Boves, he silenced even their oaths for a while with a demonstration of his rage.

He came upon them drinking. A hoard of luxury had been discovered, red wine in open casks left by fleeing villagers. Henry rode among the soldiers, striking out with a staff, his face pale with fury. Men lay droning happily on the ground, oblivious even of their sovereign. Others were filling their water-flasks from the barrels, trying to drink and hoard at the same time Henry lashed a bending man across the shoulders and he rolled grinning on his back.

‘All free! French wine!’ he gurgled, and ‘Henry would have struck him again, but Humphrey of Gloucester interposed.

‘Harry … it would do no harm to let them fill their bottles for the march.’ (He himself had already done so.)

‘Bottles!’ cried the King. The brown eyes in the thin face gleamed red. ‘They’ve made bottles of their bellies! How can I take France with a bevy of sots!’

Humphrey recalled Harry singing in Coldharbour, more cupshotten than any of them. There’s none, he thought, so virtuous as a reformed whore … but this is something deeper; as if he sought to take on him the sins of the world. So thinking, he gave orders to the sergeants, who smashed the casks; men wept like children.

Eight miles north-east of this minor tragedy they came to Corbie, and met sudden terror. A magnificent body of mounted French knights from Marshal Boucicaut’s force attacked them at the bridge. There was a short hot skirmish, a flail of arrows from the English archers who, hastily assembled in battle order, saw for the first time the colour of their adversary. A force that glittered, the horses’ powerful pounding legs a dappled gleam, their housings a flying rainbow. Over their armour, the knights’ tabards were starred with the blue and gilt of the French lily. The cavalry poured forward, knocking half the archers flat. They bore the scarlet-tongued oriflamme of St Denis. Owen was one of those felled to the ground.

He lay while the wave swept over him, his face in the earth, his bow lying hard beneath him. Under the chaos, his thoughts moved like mice in a skein as pretty and mad as the French colours. I shall not die. I shall know greatness. Lie still,
bach
. A hoof hit his head glancingly. His mind was drenched in the blood of the oriflamme and darkened to peace.

Page said: ‘Are you wakeful?’

‘I think I’m dead.’ He groaned, and sat up carefully.

‘It’s a scratch!’ said Page. ‘You’re charmed, Owen.’ A body with broken twisted limbs was being carried past.

‘Their colours were beautiful,’ said Owen. ‘The colours of death are beautiful.’

Henry said to the few knights he had captured on the bridge:

‘How are the French forces deployed? Where is d’Albret’s army?’

He knew he would be given a fair answer. Under threat of death these prisoners, like the Gascon spy, always told everything. He now learned that his army was virtually trapped. The French on the north bank were moving across the route from Corbie to Péronne, cutting off the river. Only Nesle to the east was near enough; he might reach it first. He stared at the captives; their elegance was almost unruffled by the recent skirmish. Their gilded trefoils winked from their blue tabards. They could have been riding to a tourney. One face wore a complacent sneer which enraged him.

‘Why do you laugh in our presence?’ he demanded. The Frenchman gave a little shrug.

‘I was thinking of your poor archers. Such skill wasted by the speed of our horsemen. They scarcely had chance to draw a bow!’

Neither did they, Henry mused, his rage fading. With regret he thought of those fine weapons of polished elm, ash, hazel or best of all, yew. The arrows, fletched with duck or peacock feathers or parchment, should have brought down this gaudy cavalry …’

‘It was amusing,’ said the French knight. ‘While my adversary strove to reload from his quiver …
hoopla
! my Bayard ran on and crushed him into the ground! To this art I trained the beast …’

Bayard
. Strange that a horse’s name should spark a memory so apposite to the moment that it seemed inspired. Henry sat quiet. The prisoners grew restive.

‘My family will ransom me, English lord,’ said one to Thomas Erpingham, who stood behind the King. ‘We’re rich.’

Henry said: ‘Later,’ and dismissed captives and escort.

Bayard
, he thought. At Nicopolis, where my father fought so long ago, the Sultan Bayard solved the problem of archers versus charging cavalry.
Les chevaux de frise
!

‘The archers will grumble,’ he said to Erpingharn with a brilliant sudden smile.

‘Sire?’

‘When each man is ordered to bear, wherever he goes, a stout stake sharpened at both ends.’

‘To fix in the earth like a fence before the charge?’ Erpingham too was remembering.

‘… thus giving each bowman time to load and reload … we’ll see what amusement the French find in that!’

The war councillors admired the idea, but their faces remained tense. The Duke of York said: ‘We are still shadowed by a mighty host!’

‘We’ll march to Nesle,’ said Henry. ‘The river is fordable there. At least it was last evening when the scouts came in.’

‘Further east!
South
-east!’ Edward of York said aghast. He thought with dull disquiet of the long looping dog-leg route deeper into France. They would not see Calais this side of Christmas. Perhaps he himself would never see Calais again.

‘There’s no other way,’ Henry said. ‘We must outmarch d’Albret.’

When the army moved off over the chalky terrain towards Chaulnes and Nesle, there was grumbling as he had forecast. The long staves were unwieldy. If used as an aid to walking, the sharp lower point caught in the ground and caused a stumble. Carried crosswise, eyes were endangered. So the army shouldered this extra burden and, grimly onmoving, looked like a plodding field of dragons’ teeth.

Under threat of having their town burned, the people of Nesle were no less willing to capitulate than those at Arques and Eu. Henry’s fretful temper grew when he saw the red strips of rag hung from the windows of cottage and farm. Again! the damned oriflamme, the symbol of stubbornness with which the French upheld their crown. He was unimpressed. These were his people. He sent soldiers into the homesteads to tear the emblem down, and there he billeted men who were still sick or wounded from past skirmishes, placing a guard in each dwelling to keep the invalids from secret murder. Constantly planning with his council, he knew little of what passed within these besieged houses. The army had learned discretion. The rapes, the softer liaisons, the drinking and looting were performed in stealth. For once such details escaped Henry’s meticulous punitive mind, for he was preoccupied with acquiring the knowledge he craved.

He was roused from bed by a deputation anxious to see the last of the English army who, by its hidden excesses, had achieved perhaps more than their King could imagine. The whiteheaded town elders handed him words sweet as summer flowers.

‘There are two fords north-west of here, English sires,’ said the spokesman, leaning on an ashplant.

‘How far?’

The old man shrugged. ‘A day. Perhaps one and a half days. You will have to cross a swamp. There is a lower road to the ford at Béthencourt, another to Voyennes in the north. Both are unguarded.’

‘When the kingdom is mine,’ said Henry, ‘I will see you have your reward.’

‘Our reward is your departing!’ said the ancient. ‘Look for the causeway across the marsh.’ Henry was already saying to his chief offcers: ‘Rouse and ready the men to move at dawn.’

So they went forward into shortening October, into mud and marsh and reeds. The pack-wagons took the Béthencourt road, the men-at-arms and archers made for Voyennes. Across the swampland the murky little Ingon river crawled to join the Somme. The causeway was a treacherous, crumbling, single-file plateau, and less than a mile from its end, the company was brought to a halt. The last stretch had been destroyed, leaving a vista of slime and deep pools fringed by coarse grass. It was too late to turn back or seek other crossings. Trees were felled and a row of nearby deserted cottages dismantled. Logs, doorframes, thatch, gates, and bundles of thicket were stacked to form a precarious road over which the company could reach the ford. Dawn yielded to day and then mid-day. Henry stood at the head of the causeway, and as the frantic work upon it moved, so he moved nearer the river, overseeing the repairs, giving orders, warnings. As each section grew he rode his horse on the wedged timbers, testing for safety.

A detachment of lightly armed bowmen had gone ahead across the swamp, springing from tussock to tussock towards the ford. They waded in waist-deep, fighting the little sharp currents and clambering up the farther bank to form a bridge-head against any attack that might be threatening in the vicinity. Owen and John Page stood soaked and shivering with the others, but the little Irishmen, who wore nothing but a leather codpiece and discarded even that for the crossing, dried themselves by dancing about.

‘You were nimble,’ Page said to Owen. Page had slipped into the mud.

‘There’s a bog like that outside Glyndyfrdwy.’ The old demesne and that night of his enlistment seemed far off, like something in another childish life, with no right of application in face of this reality.

‘Look!’ The causeway was completed. The first horse and wagon came, urged with cries, splashing down into the river. The horse’s head was raised, its eyes rolled, the cartwheels drew a brown fan of ripples behind. A horseman followed, almost diving his mount into the water, and then another. The encouraging figure of the King could clearly be seen; he was waving the file on. It was nearly night; the army was wet, worked to exhaustion, but the Somme was gained. Mingled with the cackle of heron and the gurking of frogs, a little cheer arose, as if this fording had been a baptism of hope.

When they lay billeted around Athies and Monchy-Lagache, an hour from the river, the word Calais had form and meaning once more. At the end of this
chevauchée
, they would be able to renew themselves in home territory. Sleep came easy, even through sickness and privation, for the first time in weeks. None knew that in the King’s pavilion, three French heralds knelt with solemn proclamation.

The unseen force was already very near, north at Péronne; all the great commanders, including Marshal Boucicaut and d’Albret, who had separately tracked the invasion from Rouen and now deployed their armies to sprawl across the only route to Calais. Likewise young Charles of Orléans, with his crack fighting force, and the old Duke of Berry, veteran of Poitiers; and the Duke of Bourbon. All the noble armies not already at Péronne were close enough to encircle and crush any forward movement. Only King Charles of France and the Dauphin Louis were absent. The Duke of Berry had persuaded them to stay behind. Though the puny half-dying English army posed no real threat, there were always mishaps not to be risked by the figurehead of France and his heir.

The courteous heralds’ faces were in handsome diplomat mould. Their
côtes d’armes
swooned with colour. Behind them a page bore the oriflamme, windless on its staff like a skein of blood.

‘Right puissant and mighty prince, great and noble is thy kingly power, as is reported among our lords.’

Civilly Henry inclined his head, while they told him they knew his intent to conquer the towns, castles and cities of the realm of France, and that for the sake of their country and their oaths, the lords were assembled to defend their rights.

‘They inform thee by us that before thou comest to Calais they will meet thee to fight with thee and to be revenged of thy conduct.’

Henry caught the Duke of York’s eye. Here on the high ground outside Péronne was a fine place for battle, with the advantage his. This he had already discussed with York, with Umfraville, Cornwall, Oxford, Camoys, Gloucester and Erpingham. He said quietly:

‘Be all things according to the will of God. We shall take our way straight to Calais, and if our enemies try to disturb us it will not be without the utmost peril. We do not seek them out, neither shall we fear them. They shall not interrupt our journey without a great shedding of Christian blood.’

Their mission accomplished, the heralds bowed deeply, and Henry directed: ‘Pay them for their courtesy.’ A steward presented a bag of gold coins. As the tent-flaps closed, Humphrey of Gloucester blew out his cheeks. ‘So! A battle, now?’

‘We wait.’ Henry rose. His eyes had a sheen of purpose. ‘For a full day and night. If they make no move, we march on to Calais.’

Twelve hours later it began to rain heavily and continued when, at the second day’s dawning, the army moved down into the valley towards Péronne. Loose shale and small branches broken off by the torrent streamed down the hill. Feet lost hold in the greasy mud. The rainfilled wind blew into eyes and tugged at sodden clothing. A frightened packhorse bolted with its burden and fell kicking into the little river Cologne. Under the walls of Péronne there was no sight of the enemy.