The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic (46 page)

'And if you wait,' Alençon said scathingly, 'Edward will slip away in the night and tomorrow we'll face an empty hill.'

'They're cold, wet, hungry and ready to be slaughtered,' the Duke of Lorraine insisted.

'And if they don't leave, sire,' the Count of Flanders warned, 'they'll have more time to dig trenches and holes.'

And the signs are good,' John of Hainault, a close companion of the King and the Lord of Beaumont, added.

'The signs?' the King asked.

John of Hainault gestured for a man in a black cloak to step forward.
The man, who had a long white beard, bowed low.
'The sun, sire,' he said, 'is in conjunction with Mercury and opposite Saturn. Best of all, noble sire, Mars is in the house of Virgo. It spells victory, and could not be more propitious.'

And how much gold, Philip wondered, had been paid to the astrologer to come up with that prophecy, yet he was also tempted by it. He thought it unwise to do anything without a horoscope and wondered where his own astrologer was. Probably still on the Abbeville road.

'Go now!' Alençon urged his brother.

Guy Vexille, the Count of Astarac, pushed his horse into the throng surrounding the King. He saw a green-and-red-jacketed crossbowman, evidently the commander of the Genoese, and spoke to him in Italian. 'Has the rain affected the strings?'

'Badly,' Carlo Grimaldi, the Genoese leader, admitted. Crossbow strings could not be unstrung like the cords of ordinary bows for the tension in the cords was too great and so the men had simply tried to shelter their weapons under their inadequate coats. 'We should wait till tomorrow,' Grimaldi insisted, 'we can't advance without pavises.'

'What's he saying?' Alençon demanded.

The Count of Astarac translated for His Majesty's benefit, and the King, pale and long-faced, frowned when he heard that the crossbowmen's long shields that protected them from the enemy's arrows while they reloaded their cumbersome weapons had still not arrived. 'How long will they be?' he asked plaintively, but no one knew. 'Why didn't they travel with the bowmen?' he demanded, but again no one had an answer. 'Who are you?' the King finally asked the Count.

'Astarac, sire,' Guy Vexille said.

'Ah.' It was plain the King had no idea who or what Astarac was, nor did he recognize Vexille's shield that bore the simple symbol of the cross, but Vexille's horse and armour were both expensive and so the King did not dispute the man's right to offer advice. 'And you say the bows won't draw?'

'Of course they'll draw!' the Count of Alençon man interrupted. 'The damned Genoese don't want to fight.
Bastard Genoese.'
He spat. 'The English bows will be just as wet,' he added.

'The crossbows will be weakened, sire,' Vexille explained carefully, ignoring the hostility of the King's younger brother. 'The bows will draw, but they won't have their full range or force.'

'It would be best to wait?' the King asked.

'It would be wise to wait, sire,' Vexille said, 'and it would be especially wise to wait for the pavises.'

'Tomorrow's horoscope?'
John of Hainault asked the astrologer.

The man shook his head. 'Neptune approaches the bendings tomorrow, sire. It is not a hopeful conjunction.'

'Attack now!
They're wet, tired and hungry,' Alençon urged.
'Attack now!'

The King still looked dubious, but most of the great lords were confident and they hammered him with their arguments. The English were trapped and a delay of even one day might give them a chance to escape. Perhaps their fleet would come to Le Crotoy? Go now, they insisted, even though it was late in the day. Go and kill. Go and win. Show Christendom that God is on the side of the French. Just go, go now. And the King, because he was weak and because he wanted to appear strong, surrendered to their wishes.

So the oriflamme was taken from its leather tube and carried to its place of honour at the front of the men-at-arms. No other flag would be allowed to go ahead of the long plain red banner that flew from its cross-staff and was guarded by thirty picked knights who wore scarlet ribbons on their right arms. The horsemen were given their long lances,
then
the conrois closed together so the knights and men-at-arms were knee to knee. Drummers took the rain covers from their instruments and Grimaldi, the Genoese commander, was peremptorily told to advance and kill the English archers. The King crossed himself while a score of priests fell to their knees in the wet grass and began to pray.

The lords of France rode to the hill crest where their mailed horsemen waited. By nightfall they would all have wet swords and prisoners enough to break England for ever.

For the oriflamme was going into battle.

—«»—«»—«»—

'God's teeth!'
Will Skeat sounded astonished as he scrambled to his feet. 'The bastards are coming!' His surprise was justified, for it was late in the afternoon, the time when labourers would think of going home from the fields.

The archers stood and stared. The enemy was not yet advancing, but a horde of crossbowmen were spreading across the valley bottom, while above them the French knights and men-at-arms were arming themselves with lances.

Thomas thought it had to be a feint. It would be dark in
another three or four hours
, yet perhaps the French were confident they could do the business quickly. The crossbowmen were at last starting forward. Thomas took off his helmet to find a bowstring, looped one end over a horn tip,
then
flexed the shaft to fix the other loop in its nock. He fumbled and had to make three attempts to string the long black weapon. Sweet Jesus, he thought, but they were really coming! Be calm, he told himself, be calm, but he felt as nervous as when he had stood on the slope above Hookton and dared himself to kill a man for the very first time. He pulled open the laces of the arrow bag.

The drums began to beat from the French side of the valley and a great cheer sounded. There was nothing to explain the cheer; the men-at-arms were not moving and the crossbowmen were still a long way off. English trumpets responded, calling sweet and clear from the windmill where the King and a reserve of men-at-arms waited. Archers were stretching and stamping their feet all along the hill. Four thousand English bows were strung and ready, but there were half as many cross-bowmen again coming towards them, and behind those six thousand Genoese were thousands of mailed horsemen.

'No pavises!' Will Skeat
shouted
. 'And their strings will be damp.'

'They won't have the reach for us.' Father Hobbe had appeared at Thomas's side again.

Thomas nodded, but was too dry-mouthed to answer. A crossbow in good hands, and there were none better than the Genoese, should outrange a straight bow, but not if it had a damp string. The extra range was no great advantage, for it took so long to rewind a bow that an archer could advance into range and loose six or seven arrows before the enemy was ready to send his second bolt, but even though Thomas understood that imbalance he was still nervous. The enemy looked so numerous and the French drums were great heavy kettles with thick skins that boomed like the devil's own heartbeat in the valley. The enemy horsemen were edging forward, eager to spur their mounts into an English line they expected to be deeply wounded by the crossbows' assault while the English men-at-arms were shuffling together, closing their line to make solid ranks of shields and steel. The mail clinked and jangled.

'God is with you!' a priest shouted.

'Don't waste your arrows,' Will Skeat called. 'Aim true, boys, aim true. They ain't going to stand long;' He repeated the message as he walked along his line. 'You look like you've seen a ghost, Tom.'

'Ten thousand ghosts,' Thomas said.

'There's more of the bastards than that,' Will Skeat said. He turned and gazed at the hill.
'Maybe twelve thousand horsemen?'
He grinned. 'So that's twelve thousand arrows, lad.'

There were six thousand crossbowmen and twice as many men-at-arms, who were being reinforced by infantry that was appearing on both French flanks. Thomas doubted that those foot soldiers would take any part in the battle, not unless it turned into a rout, and he understood that the crossbowmen could probably be turned back because they were coming without pavises and would have rain-weakened weapons, but to turn the Genoese back would need arrows, a lot of arrows, and that would mean fewer for the mass of horsemen whose painted lances, held upright, made a thicket along the far hilltop. 'We need more arrows,' he said to Skeat.

'You'll make do with what you've got,' Skeat said, 'we all will. Can't wish for what you ain't got.'

The crossbowmen paused at the foot of the English slope and shook themselves into line before placing their bolts into their bows' troughs. Thomas took out his first arrow and superstitiously kissed its head, which was a wedge of slightly rusted steel with a wicked point and two steep barbs. He laid the arrow over his left hand and slotted its nocked butt onto the centre of the bowstring, which was protected from fraying with a whipping of hemp. He half tensed the bow, taking comfort from the yew's resistance. The arrow lay inside the shaft, to the left of the handgrip. He released the tension, gripped the arrow with his left thumb and flexed the fingers of his right hand.

A sudden blare of trumpets made him jump. Every French drummer and trumpeter was working now, making a cacophony of noise that started the Genoese forward again. They were climbing the English slope, their faces white blurs framed by the grey of their helmets. The French horsemen were coming down the slope, but slowly and in fits and starts, as though they were trying to anticipate the order to charge.

'God is with us!' Father Hobbe called. He was in his archer's stance, left foot far forward, and Thomas saw the priest had no shoes.

'What happened to your boots, father?'

'Some poor boy needed them more than I did. I'll get a French pair.'

Thomas smoothed the feathers of his first arrow.

'Wait!' Will Skeat
shouted
. 'Wait!' A dog ran out of the English battleline and its owner shouted for it to come back, and in a heartbeat half the archers were calling the dog's name.
'Biter!
Biter! Come here, you bastard!
Biter!'

'Quiet!' Will Skeat roared as the dog, utterly confused, ran towards the enemy.

Off to Thomas's right the gunners were crouched by the carts, linstocks smoking. Archers stood in the wagons, weapons half braced. The Earl of Northampton had come to stand among the archers.

'You shouldn't be here, my lord,' Will Skeat said.

'The King makes him a knight,' the Earl said, 'and he thinks he can give me orders!' The archers grinned. 'Don't kill all the men-at-arms, Will,' the Earl went on. 'Leave some for us poor swordsmen.'

'You'll get your chance,' Will Skeat said grimly. 'Wait!' he called to the archers. 'Wait!' The Genoese were shouting as they advanced, though their voices were almost drowned by the heavy drumming and the wild trumpet calls. Biter was running back to the English now and a cheer sounded when the dog at last found shelter in the battleline. 'Don't waste your goddamn arrows,' Will Skeat called. 'Take proper aim, like your mothers taught you.'

The Genoese were within bow range now, but not an arrow flew, and the red-and-green-coated cross-bowmen still came, bending forward slightly as they trudged up the hill. They were not coming straight at the English, but at a slight angle, which meant that the right of the English line, where Thomas was, would be struck first. It was also the place where the slope was most gradual and Thomas, with a sinking heart, understood he was likely to be in the heart of the fight. Then the Genoese stopped, shuffled into line and began to shout their war cry.

'Too soon,' the Earl muttered.

The crossbows went into the shooting position. They were angled steeply upwards as the Genoese hoped to drop a thick rain of death on the English line.

'Draw!' Skeat said, and Thomas could feel his heart thumping as he pulled the coarse string back to his right ear. He chose a man in the enemy line, placed the arrow tip directly between that man and his right eye, edged the bow to the right because that would compensate for the bias in the weapon's aim, then lifted his left hand and shifted it back to the left because the wind was coming from that direction. Not much wind. He had not thought about aiming the arrow, it was all instinct, but he was still nervous and a muscle was twitching in his right leg. The English line was utterly silent, the crossbowmen were shouting and the French drums and trumpets deafening. The Genoese line looked like green and red statues.

'Let go, you bastards,' a man muttered and the Genoese obeyed him. Six thousand crossbow bolts arced into the sky.

'Now,'
Will
said, surprisingly softly.

And the arrows flew.

—«»—«»—«»—

Eleanor crouched by the wagon that held the archers' baggage. Thirty or forty other women were there, many with children, and they all flinched as they heard the trumpets, the drums and the distant shouting. Nearly all the women were French or Breton, though not one was hoping for a French victory, for it was their men who stood on the green hill.

Eleanor prayed for Thomas, for Will Skeat and for her father. The baggage park was beneath the crest of the hill so she could not see what was happening, but she heard the deep, sharp note of the English bowstrings being released, and then the rush of air across
feathers that was
the sound of thousands of arrows in flight. She shuddered. A dog tethered to the cart, one of the many strays that had been adopted by the archers, whimpered. She patted it. 'There will be meat tonight,' she told the dog. The news had spread that the cattle captured in Le Crotoy would be reaching the army today. If there was an army left to eat them. The bows sounded again, more raggedly. The trumpets still screamed and the drumbeats were constant. She glanced up at the hill crest, half expecting to see arrows in the sky, but there was only grey cloud against which scores of horsemen were outlined. Those horsemen were part of the King's small reserve of troops and Eleanor knew that if she saw them spur forward then the main line would have been breached. The King's royal standard was flying from the topmost vane of the windmill where it stirred in the small breeze to show its gold, crimson and blue.