Fields of Glory (53 page)

Another man, another sword aimed at his head. He ducked and heard the blade whistle over him like a bird of prey. Sir John rammed his head forward, feeling the top of his helmet crash into the
man’s face, then he jerked his head up, catching the front of the man’s bascinet with the point of his own before shoving the tip of his sword up and beneath the man’s helmet. It
cut the man’s chin but missed the soft, vulnerable base of his jaw. Sir John pulled it free and jabbed at the man’s neck with the length of his blade, trying to cut away at it, but the
mail was too strong.

The man fell away, but now another was before him, and Sir John was forced to retreat under the press of French men-at-arms. He found that he was being pushed back onto the Prince’s group,
with more lances and swords facing them than ever. He brought his blade down on one lance, but two more pointed at him, prodding his breast and belly. His armour was not the newest, but his coat of
plates was strong, thank God, and he was safe enough. A horse reared above them all, and a sword slammed down on another man, but then the arm wielding the sword was grabbed by the man holding the
Prince’s banner. The horseman was dragged from his mount, still trying to fight, and died on the ground as three men hacked and bludgeoned at him. One man thrust his misericorde into the
eye-slots of his visor, and the body jerked and twisted, then sagged.

The men about the Prince were exhausted, but they fought on like those possessed. There was no time to see who was who, only to glimpse the weapon being thrust towards them and to counter it:
cut at them, grab them and pull the opponent off-guard, stab at them, thrust one’s sword’s pommel into their faces, smash gauntleted fists into them, batter them with the cross of
one’s sword –
anything
– to keep them at bay a little longer.

The hand-to-hand combat raged within the dwindling number of men about the Prince.

And then the Prince was no longer there.

Sir John was so weary from the battle that he had to blink. The Prince was gone! He had fallen! The French were cheering, and their attack redoubled – and even as Sir John felt the
encroaching despair, he saw the Prince’s banner fall, the material rippling as it was lowered to the ground like a kite in a feeble wind.

The sight gave him a fury that lent power to his arm. Shrieking like a demon of the moors, he fought with a renewed determination. If his Prince was dead, he would die on the same field. He
hurled himself at his enemies, his sword now notched and dull, sending it crashing at faces and hands, at any limb or sign of weakness in mail or armour, and as he did so, he could hear the blood
singing in his ears. A red fog enveloped him. All he saw was the man before him, then the next, and the next, and he fought like a berserker.

‘For Saint Boniface!’ he screamed.

A war hammer on a long pole slammed into his helmet with such force that the padded coif was crushed and he felt the metal crunch against his forehead. Blood washed into his eyes, and for a
moment he could see nothing. He fell onto all fours and lifted his visor, wiping his face quickly, before trying to rise. A man’s hand was on his back, and he felt a fresh blow that sent his
senses reeling. It felt as though he was back aboard that damned ship when they landed from Portsmouth, the deck rolling beneath him and sending his gut into paroxysms. He waited for the next blow
with fatalistic expectation.

‘Sir John! Sir John – get up!’ cried a voice. With a sudden recognition he realised it belonged to Richard, his esquire.

‘Help me!’ he grunted, and Richard put a hand under his armpit, hauling him upright once more.

The battle had ebbed, and Sir John had time to gaze about him as he got his breath back. So many bodies lay all about him, there was scarcely room to move. Many were Frenchmen, who had died in
this undignified huddle while still more clambered over their bodies to fight.

‘Sir John, I hope you are well, sir?’ came another familiar voice.

‘My Lord, I thought you were with the fallen!’ Sir John said as the Prince grinned at him.

Edward of Woodstock was leaning on his sword, his long hair over his eyes. He had thrown aside his helmet for the nonce, while he panted for breath. Blood streaming from a gash in his forehead
gave him a ferocious air. He looked like a Lyme pirate, Sir John thought, and felt his heart go out to the lad.

‘Me? That is villeiny-saying, Sir John! You think I would dare desert the field by dying?’ He laughed. ‘I am about as dead as you are! And you look marvellously well, old
friend.’

‘I am, my lord,’ Sir John said. The Prince’s banner stood above them again, Sir Thomas Daniel clinging to it like a drowning sailor gripping a spar, as though it was all that
kept him upright. ‘I thought I saw your banner fall, too. Was that a dream?’

‘No, Sir John. My foolish bearer considered that I was about to be bested by the enemy, and allowed the banner to slip while he drew steel to help me, but I have instructed him to hold it
aloft once more. I don’t wish my father to grow concerned for my health.’

He laughed again, wiping blood from his brow. ‘I won’t have any man running to demand help. This is
my
victory!’

Sir John nodded and stared ahead again. The French were reforming. Down at the far side of the rolling valley, their knights were shouting encouragement at the men-at-arms and horsemen, urging
and cajoling them to return to the fray.

‘Christ’s blood, here they come again,’ he said.

Berenger and the men ran to where Archibald was struggling, red-faced, with a massive iron spike, trying to roll his biggest gonne back onto the trestle where it had been
set.

‘Come on, you bastard, gutless lurdan! What, do you defy God’s representative? In God’s name, I command that you obey, in
nomine patris et
. . .’

‘What in Christ’s heaven happened here?’ Berenger demanded.

There were shards of metal all about the place. A great splinter had embedded itself in the side of the nearest cart, and there were many smouldering remains that looked much like parts of
men.

‘They loaded it with too much powder, the bitch-clout deofols!’ Archibald said with contempt. ‘And then had the temerity to leave a powder keg open nearby, if you can believe
it! Now are you going to help me get this damned lump of metal facing the enemy or not? I asked for your help, not for you to come and gawp!’

In a short time Berenger and the men were using great iron bars to roll the enormous bulk of the cannon back into the bed created for it. As it butted up to the timbers set in the ground,
Archibald began bellowing at the bemused archers, pointing to a long rod with rags wrapped about one end sitting in a leather bucket. ‘Fripper, grab that, man, bring it here! That’s
right,’ he said, shoving the wet rags home into the barrel. He twisted and fiddled with it, then pulled it out again. Another rod with a blackened and filthy sheepskin wrapped about it lay on
the grass nearby, and Archibald took it up and rammed that home. ‘Ed!’

The Donkey was already at his side, his face red and sweaty, with streaks where perspiration had cut through the soot on his cheeks and brow. He held a long pole with a rounded copper shovel
like a cylinder cut in half at the end, which was filled with coarse grains of Archibald’s black powder. Archibald took it from him and gently inserted it into the barrel, turning the rod
over so that the powder was all deposited in the barrel. He shoved a wooden plug after it, and poked it home with the back of the powder-scoop, before taking up a linen bag of stones and placing it
in the tube. It too was pushed up to rest against the plug.

‘Where are they, Donkey?’ he rasped as he hurried to the opposite end of the gonne. He blew at the touch-hole’s little dent, and took a small amount of powder from the flask
under his shirt, tipping it into the dent and cupping his hand over it to stop it blowing away.

‘They are coming now.’

‘Very well. Stand back, the lot of you!’ Archibald roared, and peered along the length of his barrel.

‘Donkey, the match.’

Ed picked up the cord and blew on it carefully. Berenger saw the end begin to glow like coals in a fire, and when it was a brilliant red, Ed passed it to Archibald.

The gynour took it up, blew on it once more, and peered down the length of the barrel as he did so, aiming the tube at his enemy, his eyes narrowed. As the first of the enemy appeared through
the mist, he held the match just above the touch-hole, waiting. When there were a hundred men visible, he touched the vent.

There was a deafening roar and a belch of smoke that almost, but not quite, concealed the vast purple and scarlet flames. An ochre-yellow tinge to the smoke made it look like poison, and then it
was gone, and a thick, black fume washed past the men, carrying the unmistakable stench of brimstone.

Sir John irritably jerked away from the hands that tried to help him, and returned to his place in the line. ‘I’m not a cripple! Leave me alone. There are men who
need help, but I’m not one.’

His esquire returned with him and stood silently at his side as they stared down at the enemy. The French were running up the hill towards them again, many thousands, all on foot, and Sir John
grasped a lance from the ground at his feet, sheathing his sword. ‘One last push, men – one last push! For God and Saint Boniface!’

‘For God and Saint Edward!’ his esquire shouted beside him.

‘Who?’ Sir John demanded.

‘Saint Edward,’ Richard Bakere repeated calmly.

Sir John shook his head in disgust and turned back to the men coming to attack them. ‘If you must . . . Form up! Hold the line, no matter what!
Hold the line!
’

Berenger coughed as the worst of the smoke curled lazily away. A swathe had been cut through the men racing towards them. While Archibald scurried with Ed to load another
consignment of pebbles, Berenger bellowed at his men to return to the archers’ stands where their arrows awaited them. They only had a paltry number with them, for Donkey was entirely
involved with Archibald. Once back to their positions, they took up their bows in earnest. Each shot must count.

The men running up the hill were tired. They had marched for miles that day, encumbered with their heavy weapons, and now they were forced to charge uphill to attack the English in their
impregnable position. Berenger nocked an arrow and drew back the string. The muscles in the back of his neck, his shoulder-blades, his upper arms, his belly – all were complaining at the
fresh assault. He could still lift his bow and send arrows after his targets, but the strain of drawing a bow powerful enough to spear an arrow through an inch of oak was beginning to tell. It was
a white-hot, searing agony that burned all his muscles without respite.

‘Draw! Loose!’

The orders still came, and through the mists and smoke Berenger saw the French forces hurled to the ground as the arrows from around ten thousand archers took their toll. While their rate of
fire had slowed from their peak, there were still four or five arrows rising into the air every minute from each of them: forty to fifty thousand arrows plunging down into the midst of the French
army in an unremitting hail of death. The English stood safely distant, letting their arrows kill a hundred yards and more away.

There came a thunderous bark, and again the men were blinded as Archibald’s great gonne fired. The sharper crackle of the smaller gonnes was almost a chattering compared with the vast
bellow of that enormous maw. As it fired, Berenger saw French men before it slashed and dismembered before the smoke rolled thankfully before him and obliterated the sight. There was a hideous
sound now: an insane keening from men, horses, dogs, which verily grated on the soul. It was a terrible, horrible sound, and Berenger grabbed arrows and loosed still faster, trying to block it from
his ears.

It was Jack who bellowed and pointed as the smoke cleared.

A group of the French had split away from the main body, and fifty or more were rushing at the gonnes and Archibald. Berenger shouted to the nearer men to have them redirect their arrows, but it
was too late.

‘With me!’ he roared, and ran for the gonnes.

Archibald fired the charge and felt the ground shake as the great gonne leaped up in her bed.

He adored this beast. She was the largest of the big gonnes, and had the power to slaughter at a great distance. If treated with consideration, she would perform her duty with reliable, deadly
effect.

Seeing Ed and Béatrice near the powder, he beckoned. They had to reload the gonne again. But the foolish boy was pointing and mouthing something. He could mouth all he liked, Archibald
could hear only a dull ringing in his ears. ‘Get over here, you Donkey,’ he bawled. It was strange to be able to bellow at the top of his voice and hear almost nothing! He waved his
arms to attract the boy’s attention.

It was at the last moment that he finally realised Ed was shouting a warning about something behind him. He turned, the great iron pole in his fist still, and saw more than forty men rushing at
him.