Crown in Candlelight (29 page)

Yet wave after wave came on, and Henry went forth in gladness to meet them. On either side he heard the humming song of the arrows. Psalms ran in his head. Ice-cold, flanked by his Household, he strode forward, the flamecrossed surcoat of St George still etched on his mind and his banners. Endeavour blazed about him as the jewelled crown circled his helm in shimmering approval. Ice-cold he was, yet he burned to prove himself in skill and prowess, this day, tomorrow, for ever. The knights about him, taut with dedication, drew nearer to their charge, feeling the bounding rhythms of his zeal. He went towards the shining close-packed death like a lover to his bride. The hoarse shouts of
Montjoie!
were music. He was jewelled, lean, starved almost to ecstasy, and, like the knights who ran beside him, ready for death or honour yet at the same time able to judge how the royally hatched front line of the new advance, heavy with weapons, was already being forced into a conglomerate horde. The archers continued to fire an irrepressible storm at its flanks and the trees crowded inwards. The ducal host, doubly encompassed, nudged and bolstered one another and the sounds of mail plunging upon mail were heard over the battle-cries. There was a subtle desperation in those cries. Henry heard it and communicated it with a wild look, a terse comment, to the running men who tried to shield him.

Bourbon, d’Albret, Boucicaut, and Eu. These were the shapely bright standards charging through the mud, and with them Charles d’Orléans (he recognized the peacock feathers and broom), and then a tide of steel smashed down, many, too many for anyone’s good. Under the powerful impact, the English line swayed and fell back. The shock ran through three detachments from Lord Camoys to the Duke of York, but the main collision was sustained by the King’s party. Henry, clearly marked by his gold helm and crown, howled a challenge; he raised his sword and. laid about him, while his Household whirled, their axes protectively cleaving hands from wrists, embedding blades in faces, moving like dancers to avoid the rushing unwieldy onslaught. The noise was like a thousand blacksmiths at work as the lightly clad Englishmen struck at the writhing sea of armour all about them. The cries of
Montjoie!
diminished, and the English line surged forward again, pressing the steel giants still harassed by the bowmen and crushed in upon one another by the trees. Their cannon were silent; their crossbowmen, pushed sideways, had ceased trying to load their antique weapons. By now the knights themselves were so crushed and hindered that they could find neither space nor strength to lift their arms. The charge had become like the butting of a hornless bull.

Impotently they thrashed about, began to stumble and fall. The entire line, off balance, panicked as it tried to parry the blows hammering from all sides. Under an assault from Lord Camoys’s party twenty fell, some not even wounded but swiftly suffocating beneath piled armed bodies. The assault looked like a house of cards, brushed by a wanton hand. Cheering rose from the archers, who, maddened by prowess, left their places again to join the affray. Owen, his jacket stiff with blood, went to work with an axe and a broken lance. Davy Gam, his one eye like a fiend’s, smashed three French knights to the ground with a broadsword as if he were lopping daffodils in Tanat Vale. Everywhere the mud was reddening in runnels and lakes where mailed feet slithered; the archers’ bare legs were scarlet and the naked Irishmen, yammering their war-lust, looked as if they had rolled in a slaughterhouse. Soon deep piles of French corpses towered higher than a man’s head. The bowmen leaped to scale these pyramids, to strike downwards, then swoop like buzzards to cut the throats of those who lay groaning. Strewn among the carnage were hundreds of weapons and pieces of armour. The mighty advance, ruined by its own splendour, was no more, and across the clearing field, a horde of French were in retreat.

Suddenly a brave further flock swept down, blundering through the mailed mounds, seeking with grunts and oaths to strike at the nimble bowmen who were smashing about with halberds and spiked maces. A party of knights, led by Brunelet de Masinguëhen and Ganiot de Bournonville made for the King. De Masinguëhen’s sword, its hilt flashing with gems, arched through Henry’s bodyguard, killing one of the Household knights and landing obliquely on the King’s helm, denting the gold and slicing off one of the fleurons on the crown. His head ringing, Henry growled in fury and lashed out. Two knights went down, and the bodyguard redoubled their strokes, fighting shoulder to shoulder with the King, killing and maiming until the danger was past. Henry’s slight figure seemed to be in all places at once, battling with a speed and surety weirdly inspired; a sliver of a man richly possessed by elementals.

It was becoming difficult to move about the field as fresh heaps of slain gathered. The archers were looting, tearing off gauntlets to snatch jewels from fingers, taking the fingers themselves in grim reprisal for the enemy’s earlier threat. Prisoners were being led away to be ransomed. Among the prizes were Marshal Boucicaut, speechless with disbelieving horror, the Duke of Bourbon, the Counts of Richemont, Eu and Vendôme. Taken personally by Henry’s escort was Charles, Duke of Orléans. Unhelmed, he knelt, his young face glacial as a sleepwalker’s.

‘
Alors! mon cousin!
’ said Henry, and smiled terribly.

‘I yield,’ whispered the Duke.

At that moment a clamour arose at the King’s left side. A fresh force had arrived, led by the Duke of Alençon, who had galloped off to apprehend the deserters and now rode fast with them through the pockets of combat towards Humphrey of Gloucester, who was joyfully beating the brains from the escort of the Count of Fauquemberghes. One of Alençon’s knights thrust low with a dagger. It slid under the plates of Humphrey’s cuirass and into his belly, and he was down. Instantly Henry grasped the situation. He whirled and sprang, gathering men as he went, between the little groups of combatants. His escort ran with him and others followed the call of his trumpeters and his own hoarse cry: ‘
M’aidez!
’ Among these were Davy Gam and Owen. They plunged into the mêlée surrounding Humphrey’s prone figure and closed with the men about to administer the
coup de grâce
. Owen’s axe half-severed a man’s arm at the shoulder. Davy was laughing as he struck and stabbed, drawing the attack away from Humphrey, who groaned as he was carried out of danger. Owen heard Davy cursing in Welsh, laughing again, pounding with a mace at a man who came with raised blade at the King, hacking at another’s face until it exploded in a fountain of blood. They fought one on either side of the King, shielding him to the tune of Davy’s fiendish laughter which was suddenly cut off short. From behind a Frenchman had drawn his knife halfway across Davy’s throat, plunging it deep into the great vein at the angle of his jaw.

Humphrey’s assailants had been routed, and the Duke of Alençon, instigator of the fight and wounded, came limping towards Henry, sword in hand.

‘I yield …’ he began, and Henry stretched out his hand in assent. One of the Household, blind with zeal and seeing only the drawn sword, leaped between them, axe spinning. Alençon’s head bounced like a bauble on the ground.

Owen knelt by Davy Gam. He drew his head on to his shoulder, and pressed his hands over the awful wound, but the blood gushed through his fingers and soaked him, running down his arm on to his chest. Davy’s one darkening eye searched outwards. Owen bent near his lips and watched them say: ‘Good fight,
bach. Duw annwyl!
… my prince …’

A shadow fell across them; Owen looked up at the King’s haggard bloodflecked face.

‘He saved my noble brother. Is the surgeon coming? The priest?’ Then he heard the bloodfilled whisper.

‘How goes the battle?’

‘I think the day is ours. Through God and those like you. I salute your valour, Davydd ap Llewellyn ap Hywel.’

With his sword he touched the dying man on either shoulder.

‘In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, I create thee a knight.’ His voice was overlaid by the murmuring of the priest who knelt at Davy’s head.

‘Today … we were all your slaves,’ Davy whispered joyously, and died.

The final assaults occurred at noon after a lull in which hundreds of kites and big black crows, fighting raucously among themselves, came down to feast upon the dead. They rose in a dark storm before the sudden late arrival of the Duke of Brabant.

He came hastily to face the unbelievable carnage he now saw for the first time. Directly contravening the orders of Jean sans Peur, and bringing a few Burgundian knights, he joined the battle with all the followers he could muster from the third line of mounted men who watched uncertainly beyond the trees. He saw some knights of Charles of Orléans in retreat as he hastened upon the field, and cried to them to join him. The leaders stared at him without recognition. Brabant’s haste had caused him to forget his
côte d’armes
. So he cried: ‘
Je suis Brabant! M’aidez!
’

‘
Nous sommes Armagnacs
,’ the cold hard answer came back. ‘We do not fight for Burgundy.’

Brabant, appalled but unsurprised, cast round for something to wear over his armour. He seized a trumpet from one of his heralds. The colours of its banner were similar to his own. He slashed a hole in the cloth and struggled into the makeshift tabard, then bravely led a charge forward, straight into a mêlée dominated by Henry. Within minutes he was unhorsed, his person given over to a grinning footsoldier, and most of his men dying in their blood.

The looting continued. All over the field the English had given up the fight, and, drunk with incredulous rapture, were sitting at ease on the prone steelcased forms of their prisoners. Smoke drifted from the villages of Tramecourt and Agincourt, where the houses harbouring fugitives had been set on fire under the command of Sir John Cornwall. From one dwelling a figure, wounded in the leg, erupted, rolling almost beneath Sir John’s feet.

‘Sire Gilbert de Lannoy,’ he gasped. ‘I am yours. My ransom is set at twelve thousand crowns.’

There was a great warhorse tethered nearby. Jewels winked from its bridle.

‘Twelve thousand, and the horse.’

The chevalier nodded gratefully ‘
Oui
. Save me, for the love of God!’ Cornwall’s esquires helped the wounded knight away.

Meanwhile, having witnessed the Duke of Brabant’s brave charge and been inspired by it, Marie and Fauquenberghes, their forces much depleted, were riding round recruiting those who had dropped from the fight. It was not easy. Just as Burgundians would not do battle under Armagnac, those who had lost their commanders refused to serve under any other banner. Gascons, Bretons and Poitevins threw down their arms. In all the company finally gathered numbered scarcely six hundred but with these the two Dukes, inflamed and vengeful, spurred forward. The English army was surprised, just as it had been earlier when the baggage wagons, abandoned by sentries mindful only of looting, had been plundered by some French villagers. A jewel chest was gone and some of Humphrey’s precious library, and an ornamental sword. News of this dereliction of duty was brought to Henry just as the fresh attack from Marie and Fauquemberghes began. He sent for Erpingham, safe steady Erpingham, peppered all over with blood but unscathed. Henry himself looked a hundred years old; his face was like a bleached bone.

‘This will not do!’ He said wildly. ‘The men are growing negligent. Their minds are full of ransoms, not fighting.’

‘Your Grace promised them ransoms.’

Henry glanced towards the skirmishes: Edward of York was battling strongly against Charles d’Albret whom all had thought slain. Further left Lord Camoys closed in a bout with the Duke of Marle. But elsewhere there was indolence; men ringed their hostages and gloated like yokels at a country fair.

‘Now I must disappoint them,’ he said. He gave a command to the sergeant. Groans of fury followed.

‘Kill the prisoners!’ Henry said, short-breathed. ‘I promised ransoms; I also promised throat-cutting. But spare the nobility!’

The Duke of Brabant, wealthy, royal yet unrecognizable in his strange garment, stared into his captor’s eyes. ‘Worthless,’ the man grumbled, and struck down with his blade. Just before he died the Duke cried once more, ‘
Je suis Brabant!
’

Edward of York stabbed upward, killing his opponent. Pressed closely left and right by the men of Fauquemberghes and Marle and the heavy retaliation of the English, he slipped in the mud and crashed backwards. Marle and Fauquemburghes were dead. I am unharmed, he thought—but what passes? He struggled as three hundred pounds of armed man fell on top of him. He pawed at it, saw the anguished face at which he had stared over a distance in the first moment of confrontation in the field. It was Charles d’Albret; his arms flailing like a steel windmill, gripping York involuntarily about the throat as his life ebbed. Another terrible weight fell on them both. York, unwounded yet dying, found his face crushed against that of the French commander. Like monstrous lovers they convulsed. The final gap was mended. The battle was over.

And the carrion crows returned, replacing the benign brown birds who had witnessed the beginning. Large and death-dark, their descendants would come back to feed upon these bloody fields after just five hundred years.

Home, then. Calais, then home. The men, numb with incredulous joy, ceased grumbling over the loss of their prisoners. Rations of wine and ale and food in plenty were issued and the tall tales began, waxing through the days and nights, to be repeated in England for generations. The stories had no need of embellishment. The reality was fabulous.

Some eight thousand French were dead. Among the English the casualties, not all of them mortal, numbered scarcely one hundred.

The steel serpent had been dismembered into countless noble segments. Dead were d’Albret, Châtillon of Dampierre, the Admiral of France, Rambures, commander of the artillery, Guichard Dauphin, grand hospitaller to King Charles, Brabant, Bar, Alençon, Nevers, Marle, Lorraine, Blamont Granpré, de Roucy, Fauquemberghes, Bourdon, with other chevaliers of honour too numerous to recount. In the light of this matchless triumph the men forgave Henry even when ordered to dispose of much of the acquired loot, which would have needed extra pack-trains to carry it to Calais and would have sunk the ships bearing the army home. Part of the plunder was stowed in a vast barn on the edge of Tramecourt where thousands of French corpses already lay. Pitch and fire were applied to the structure. The ensuing blaze seemed to scorch the sky. The stench was terrible. The English dead were also disposed of by fire, save for the slain lords and officers: York, Suffolk, Sir Richard Kyghley, Sir Davydd ap Llewellyn ap Hywel. Their flesh had been boiled from the bones ready for shipment to England where they would be buried.