IF A PLUM WAS THROWN at a conroi, the experts said, it should be impaled on a lance. That was how close the horsemen were supposed to be in a charge because that way they stood a chance of living, but if the conroi scattered then each man would end up surrounded by enemies. Your neighbor in a cavalry charge, the experienced men told the younger, should be closer to you than your wife. Closer even than your whore. But the first French charge was a crazed gallop and the men first became scattered when they slaughtered the Genoese and the disarray became worse as they raced uphill to close on the enemy.

The charge was not supposed to be a crazed gallop, but an ordered, dreadful and disciplined assault. The men, lined knee to knee, should have started slowly and stayed close until, and only at the very last minute, they spurred into a gallop to crash their tight-bunched lances home in unison. That was how the men were trained to charge, and their destriers were trained just as hard. A horse’s instinct, on facing a packed line of men or cavalry, was to shy away, but the big stallions were ruthlessly schooled to keep running and so crash into the packed enemy and there to keep moving, stamping, biting and rearing. A charge of knights was supposed to be thundering death on hooves, a flail of metal driven by the ponderous weight of men, horses and armor, and properly done it was a mass maker of widows.

But the men of Philip’s army who had dreamed of breaking the enemy into ribbons and slaughtering the dazed survivors had reckoned without archers and pits. By the time the undisciplined first French charge reached the English men-at-arms it had broken itself into scraps and then been slowed to a walk because the long, smooth and inviting slope turned out to be an obstacle course of dead horses, unsaddled knights, hissing arrows and leg-cracking pits concealed in the grass. Only a handful of men reached the enemy.

That handful spurred over the last few yards and aimed their lances at the dismounted English men-at-arms, but the horsemen were met by more lances that were braced against the ground and tilted up to pierce their horses’ breasts. The stallions ran onto the lances, twisted away and the Frenchmen were falling. The English men-at-arms stepped forward with axes and swords to finish them off.

“Stay in line!” the Earl of Northampton shouted.

More horses were threading through the pits, and there were no archers in front to slow them now. These were the third and fourth ranks of the French charge. They had suffered less damage from arrows and they came to help the men hacking at the English line that still bristled with lances. Men roared their battle cries, hacked with swords and axes, and the dying horses dragged down the English lances so that the French could at last close on the men-at-arms. Steel rang on steel and thumped on wood, but each horseman was faced by two or three men-at-arms, and the French were being dragged from their saddles and butchered on the ground.

“No prisoners!” the Earl of Northampton shouted. “No prisoners!” Those were the King’s orders. To take a man prisoner meant possible wealth, but it also required a moment of courtesy to inquire whether an enemy truly yielded and the English had no time for such civility. They needed only to kill the horsemen who kept streaming up the hill.

The King, watching from beneath the mill’s furled sails, which creaked as the wind twitched their tethers, saw that the French had broken through the archers only on the right, where his son fought and where the line lay closest to the French and the slope was gentlest. The great charge had been broken by arrows, but more than enough horsemen had survived and those men were spurring toward the place where the swords rang. When the French charge began it had been spread all across the battlefield, but now it shrank into a wedge shape as the men facing the English left swerved away from the archers there and added their weight to the knights and men-at-arms who hacked at the Prince of Wales’s battle. Hundreds of horsemen were still milling about in the valley’s muddy bottom, unwilling to face the arrow storm a second time, but French marshals were re-forming those men and sending them up the hill toward the growing mêlée that fought under the banners of Alençon and the Prince of Wales.

“Let me go down there, sire,” the Bishop of Durham, looking ungainly in his heavy mail and holding a massive spiked mace, appealed to the King.

“They’re not breaking,” Edward said mildly. His line of men-at-arms was four ranks deep and only the first two were fighting, and fighting well. A horseman’s greatest advantage over infantry was speed, but the French charge had been sapped of all velocity. The horsemen were being forced into a walk to negotiate the corpses and pits, and there was no room beyond to spur into a trot before they were met by a vicious defense of axes, swords, maces and spears. Frenchman hacked down, but the English held their shields high and stabbed their blades into the horses’ guts or else sliced swords across hamstrings. The destriers fell, screaming and kicking, breaking men’s legs with their wild thrashing, but every horse down was an added obstacle and, fierce as the French assault was, it was failing to break the line. No English banners had toppled yet, though the King feared for his son’s bright flag that was closest to the most violent fighting.

“Have you seen the oriflamme?” he asked his entourage.

“It fell, sire,” a household knight answered. The man pointed down the slope to where a heap of dead horses and broken men were the remnants of the first French attack. “Somewhere there, sir. Arrows.”

“God bless arrows,” the King said.

A conroi of fourteen Frenchmen managed to negotiate the pits without harm. “Montjoie St. Denis!” they shouted, and couched their lances as they spurred into the mêlée, where they were met by the Earl of Northampton and a dozen of his men.

The Earl was using a broken lance as a pike and he rammed the splintered shaft into a horse’s chest, felt the lance slide off the armor concealed by the trapper, and instinctively lifted his shield. A mace cracked on it, driving one spike clean through the leather and willow, but the Earl had his sword dangling by a strap and he dropped the lance, gripped the sword’s hilt and stabbed it into the horse’s fetlock, making the beast twist away. He dragged the shield clear of the mace’s spikes, swung the sword at the knight, was parried, then a man-at-arms seized the Frenchman’s weapon and tugged. The Frenchman pulled back, but the Earl helped and the Frenchman shouted as he was tumbled down to the English feet. A sword ran into the armor gap at his groin and he doubled over, then a mace crushed his helmet and he was left, twitching, as the Earl and his men climbed over his body and hacked at the next horse and man.

The Prince of Wales spurred into the mêlée, made conspicuous by a fillet of gold that circled his black helmet. He was only sixteen, well built, strong, tall and superbly trained. He fended an axe away with his shield and rammed his sword through another horseman’s mail.

“Off the bloody horse!” the Earl of Northampton shouted at the Prince. “Get off the bloody horse!” He ran to the Prince, seized the bridle and tugged the horse away from the fight. A Frenchman spurred in, trying to spear the Prince’s back, but a man-at-arms in the Prince’s green and white livery slammed his shield into the destrier’s mouth and the animal twitched away.

The Earl dragged the Prince back. “They see a man on horseback, sire,” he shouted up, “and they think he’s French.”

The Prince nodded. His own household knights had reached him now and they helped him down from the saddle. He said nothing. If he had been offended by the Earl, he hid it behind his face-piece as he went back to the mêlée. “St. George! St. George!” The Prince’s standard-bearer struggled to stay with his master, and the sight of the richly embroidered flag attracted still more screaming Frenchmen.

“In line!” the Earl shouted. “In line!” but the dead horses and butchered men made obstacles that neither the French nor the English could cross and so the men-at-arms, led by the Prince, were scrambling over the bodies to reach more enemies. A disemboweled horse trailed its guts toward the English, then sank onto its forelegs to pitch its rider toward the Prince, who rammed the sword into the man’s helmet, mangling the visor and starting blood from the eyeholes. “St. George!” The Prince was exultant and his black armor was streaked with enemy blood. He was fighting with his visor raised, for else he could not see properly, and he was loving the moment. The hours and hours of weapons practice, the sweating days when sergeants had drilled him and beat at his shield and cursed him for not keeping his sword point high, were all proving their worth, and he could have asked for nothing more in this life: a woman in the camp and an enemy coming in their hundreds to be killed.

The French wedge was widening as more men climbed the hill. They had not broken through the line, but they had drawn the two front English ranks across the tideline of dead and wounded, and thus scattered them into groups of men who defended themselves against a welter of horsemen. The Prince was among them. Some Frenchmen, unhorsed but unwounded, were fighting on foot.

“Forward!” the Earl of Northampton shouted at the third rank. It was no longer possible to hold the shield wall tight. Now he had to wade into the horror to protect the Prince, and his men followed him into the maelstrom of horses, blades and carnage. They scrambled over dead horses, tried to avoid the beating hooves of dying horses and drove their blades into living horses to bring the riders down to where they could be savaged.

Each Frenchman had two or three English footmen to contend against, and though the horses snapped their teeth, reared and lashed their hoofs, and though the riders beat left and right with their swords, the unmounted English invariably crippled the destriers in the end, and more French knights were pitched onto the hoof-scarred grass to be bludgeoned or stabbed to death. Some Frenchmen, recognizing the futility, spurred back across the pits to make new conrois among the survivors. Squires brought them spare lances, and the knights, rearmed and wanting revenge, came back to the fight, and always they rode toward the prince’s bright flag.

The Earl of Northampton was close to the flag now. He hammered his shield into a horse’s face, cut at its legs and stabbed at the rider’s thigh. Another conroi came from the right, three of its men still holding lances and the others with swords held far forward. They slammed against the shields of the Prince’s bodyguard, driving those men back, but other men in green and white came to their help and the Prince pushed two of them out of the way so he could hack at a destrier’s neck. The conroi wheeled away, leaving two of its knights dead.

“Form line!” the Earl shouted. “Form line!” There was a lull in the fighting about the Prince’s standard, for the French were regrouping.

And just then the second French battle, as large as the first, started down their hill. They came at a walk, knee to booted knee, lances held so close that a wind could not have passed between them.

They were showing how it should be done.

The ponderous drums drove them on. The trumpets seared the sky.

And the French were coming to finish the battle.

 

“EIGHT,” JAKE SAID.

“Three,” Sam told Will Skeat.

“Seven,” Thomas said. They were counting arrows. Not one archer had died yet, not from Will Skeat’s band, but they were perilously low on arrows. Skeat kept looking over the heads of the men-at-arms, fearful that the French would break through, but the line was holding. Once in a while, when no English banner or head was in the way, an archer would loose one of the precious arrows at a horseman, but when a shaft wasted itself by glancing off a helmet Skeat told them to save their supply. A boy had brought a dozen skins of water from the baggage and the men passed the bags around.

Skeat lotted up the arrows and shook his head. No man had more than ten, while Father Hobbe, who admittedly had started with fewer than any of the men, had none.

“Go up the hill, father,” Skeat told the priest, “and see if they’re keeping any shafts back. The King’s archers might spare some. Their captain’s called Hal Crowley and he knows me. Ask him, anyway.” He did not sound hopeful. “Right, lads, this way,” he said to the rest and led them toward the southern end of the English line where the French had not closed, then forward of the men-at-arms to reinforce the archers who, as low on arrows as the rest of the army, were keeping up a desultory harassment of any group of horsemen who threatened to approach their position. The guns were still firing intermittently, spewing a noisome stench of powder smoke on the battle’s edge, but Thomas could see little evidence that the ribalds were killing any Frenchmen, though their noise, and the whistle of their iron missiles, was keeping the enemy horsemen well away from the flank. “We’ll wait here,” Skeat said, then swore for he had seen the French second line leave the far hill crest. They did not come like the first, in ragged chaos, but steadily and properly. Skeat made the sign of cross. “Pray for arrows,” he said.

The King watched his son fight. He had been worried when the Prince had advanced on horseback, but he nodded silent approval when he saw that the boy had possessed the good sense to dismount. The Bishop of Durham pressed to be allowed to go to Prince Edward’s help, but the King shook his head. “He has to learn to win fights.” He paused. “I did.” The King had no intention of going down into the horror, not because he feared such a fight, but because once entangled with the French horsemen he would not be able to watch the rest of his line. His job was to stay by the mill and trickle reinforcements down to the most threatened parts of his army. Men of his reserve continually pleaded to be allowed into the mêlée, but the King obstinately refused them, even when they complained that their honor would be smirched if they missed the fight. The King dared not let men go, for he was watching the French second battle come down the hill and he knew he must hoard every man in case that great sweep of horsemen battered through his line.

That second French line, almost a mile across and three or four ranks deep, walked down the slope where its horses had to thread the bodies of the slaughtered Genoese. “Form up!” the conroi leaders shouted when the crossbowmen’s bodies were behind them, and the men obediently moved knee to knee again as they rode into the softer ground. The hooves made hardly any sound in the wet soil so the loudest noises of the charge were the clink of mail, the thump of scabbards and the swish of trappers on the long grass. The drummers were still beating on the hill behind, but no trumpets called.

“You see the Prince’s banner?” Guy Vexille asked Sir Simon Jekyll, who rode beside him.

“There.” Jekyll pointed his lance tip to where the ragged fight was hottest. All Vexille’s conroi had baffles on their lances, placed just back from the tip so that the wooden spears did not bury themselves in their victims’ bodies. A lance with a baffle could be dragged free of a dying man and used again. “The highest flag,” Sir Simon added.

“Follow me!” Vexille shouted, and signaled to Henry Colley, who had been given the job of standard-bearer. Colley was bitter at the assignment, reckoning he should have been allowed to fight with lance and sword, but Sir Simon had told him it was a privilege to carry the lance of St. George and Colley was forced to accept the task. He planned to discard the useless lance with its red flag as soon as he entered the mêlée, but for now he carried it high as he wheeled away from the well organized line. Vexille’s men followed their banner, and the departure of the conroi left a gap in the French formation and some men called out angrily, even accusing Vexille of cowardice, but the Count of Astarac ignored the jibes as he slanted across the rear of the line to where he judged his horsemen were precisely opposite the Prince’s men and there he found a fortuitous gap, forced his horse into the space and let his men follow as best they could.

Thirty paces to Vexille’s left a conroi with badges showing yellow hawks on a blue field trotted up the English hill. Vexille did not see Sir Guillaume’s banner, nor did Sir Guillaume see his enemy’s badge of the yale. Both men were watching the hill ahead, wondering when the archers would shoot and admiring the bravery of the first charge’s survivors who repeatedly withdrew a few paces, re-formed and recharged the stubborn English line. Not one man threatened to break the enemy, but they still tried even when they were wounded and their destriers were limping. Then, as the second French charge neared the line of Genoese crossbowmen killed by the English archers, more trumpets sounded from the French hill and the horses pricked back their ears and tried to go into the canter. Men curbed the destriers and twisted awkwardly in their saddles to peer through visor slits to find what the trumpets meant and saw that the last of the French knights, the King and his household warriors, and the blind King of Bohemia and his companions, were trotting forward to add their weight and weapons to the slaughter. The King of France rode beneath his blue banner that was spattered with the golden fleur-de-lis, while the King of Bohemia’s flag showed three white feathers on a dark red field. All the horsemen of France were committed now. The drummers sweated, the priests prayed and the royal trumpeters gave a great fanfare to presage the death of the English army.

The Count of Alençon, brother to the King, had begun the crazed charge that had left so many Frenchmen dead on the far slope, but the Count was also dead, his leg broken by his falling horse and his skull crushed by an English axe. The men he had led, those that still lived, were dazed, arrow stung, sweat-blinded and weary, but they fought on, turning their tired horses to thrash swords, maces and axes at men-at-arms, who fended the blows with shields and raked their swords across the horses’ legs. Then a new trumpet called much closer to the mêlée. The notes fell in urgent triplets that followed one after the other, and some of the horsemen registered the call and understood they were being ordered to withdraw. Not to retreat, but to make way, for the biggest attack was yet to come.

“God save the King,” Will Skeat said dourly, for he had ten arrows left and half France was coming at him.

 

THOMAS WAS NOTICING the strange rhythm of battle, the odd lulls in the violence and the sudden resurrection of horror. Men fought like demons and seemed invincible and then, when the horsemen withdrew to regroup, they would lean on their shields and swords and look like men close to death. The horses would stir again, English voices would shout warnings, and the men-at-arms would straighten and lift their dented blades. The noise on the hill was overwhelming: the occasional crack of the guns that did little except make the battlefield reek with hell’s dark stench, the screams of horses, the blacksmiths’ clangor of weapons, men panting, shouting and moaning. Dying horses bared their teeth and thrashed the turf. Thomas blinked sweat from his eyes and stared at the long slope that was thick with dead horses, scores of them, hundreds maybe, and beyond them, approaching the bodies of the Genoese who had died under the arrows’ lash, even more horsemen were coming beneath a new spread of bright flags. Sir Guillaume? Where was he? Did he live? Then Thomas realized that the terrible opening charge, when the arrows had felled so many horses and men, had been just that, an opening. The real battle was starting now.

“Will! Will!” Father Hobbe’s voice called from somewhere behind the men-at-arms. “Sir William!”

“Here, father!”

The men-at-arms made way for the priest, who was carrying an armload of arrow sheaves and leading a small frightened boy who carried still more. “A gift from the royal archers,” Father Hobbe said, and he spilled the sheaves onto the grass. Thomas saw the arrows had the red-dyed feathers of the King’s own bowmen. He drew his knife, cut a binding lace, and stuffed the new arrows into his bag.

“Into line! Into line!” the Earl of Northampton shouted hoarsely. His helmet was deeply dented over his right temple and his surcoat was spotted with blood. The Prince of Wales was shouting insults at the French, who were wheeling their horses away, going back through the tangled sprawl of dead and wounded. “Archers!” The Earl called, then pulled the Prince back into the men-at-arms who were slowly lining themselves into formation. Two men were picking up fallen enemy lances to re-arm the front rank. “Archers!” the Earl called again.

Will Skeat took his men back into their old position in front of the Earl. “We’re here, my lord.”

“You have arrows?”

“Some.”

“Enough?”

“Some,” Skeat stubbornly answered.

Thomas kicked a broken sword from under his feet. Two or three paces in front of him was a dead horse with flies crawling on its wide white eyes and over the glistening blood on its black nose. Its trapper was white and yellow, and the knight who had ridden the horse was pinned under the body. The man’s visor was lifted. Many of the French and nearly all of the English men-at-arms fought with open visors and this dead man’s eyes stared straight at Thomas, then suddenly blinked.

“Sweet Jesus,” Thomas swore, as if he had seen a ghost.

“Have pity,” the man whispered in French. “For Christ’s sake, have pity.”

Thomas could not hear him, for the air was filled with the drumbeat of hooves and the bray of trumpets. “Leave them! They’re beat!” Will Skeat bawled, for some of his men were about to draw their bows against those horsemen who had survived the first charge and had withdrawn to realign their ranks well within bowshot range. “Wait!” Skeat shouted. “Wait!”

Thomas looked to his left. There were dead men and horses for a mile along the slope, but it seemed the French had only broken through to the English line where he stood. Now they came again and he blinked away sweat and watched the charge come up the slope. They came slowly this time, keeping their discipline. One knight in the French front rank was wearing extravagant white and yellow plumes on his helmet, just as if he were in a tournament. That was a dead man, Thomas thought, for no archer could resist such a flamboyant target.

Thomas looked back at the carnage in front. Were there any English among the dead? It seemed impossible that there should not be, but he could see none. A Frenchman, an arrow deep in his thigh, was staggering in a circle among the corpses, then slumped to his knees. His mail was torn at his waist and his helmet’s visor was hanging by a single rivet. For a moment, with his hands clasped over his sword’s pommel, he looked just like a man at prayer, then he slowly fell forward. A wounded horse whinnied. A man tried to rise and Thomas saw the red cross of St. George on his arm, and the red and yellow quarters of the Earl of Oxford on his jupon. So there were English casualties after all.

“Wait!” Will Skeat shouted, and Thomas looked up to see that the horsemen were closer, much closer. He drew the black bow. He had shot so many arrows that the two callused string fingers of his right hand were actually sore, while the edge of his left hand had been rubbed raw by the flick of the goose feathers whipping across its skin. The long muscles of his back and arms were sore. He was thirsty. “Wait!” Skeat shouted again, and Thomas relaxed the string a few inches. The close order of the second charge had been broken by the bodies of the crossbowmen, but the horsemen were reforming now and were well within bow range. But Will Skeat, knowing how few arrows he had, wanted them all to count. “Aim true, boys,” he called. “We’ve no steel to waste now, so aim true! Kill the damned horses.” The bows stretched to their full extent and the string bit like fire into Thomas’s sore fingers.

“Now!” Skeat shouted and a new flight of arrows skimmed the slope, this time with red feathers among the white. Jake’s bowstring snapped and he cursed as he fumbled for a replacement. A second flight whipped away, its feathers hissing in the air, and then the third arrows were on the string as the first flight struck. Horses screamed and reared. The riders flinched and then drove back spurs as if they understood that the quickest way to escape the arrows was to ride down the archers. Thomas shot again and again, not thinking now, just looking for a horse, leading it with the steel arrowhead, then releasing. He drew out a white-feathered arrow and saw blood on the quills and knew his bow fingers were bleeding for the first time since he had been a child. He shot again and again until his fingers were raw flesh and he was almost weeping from the pain, but the second charge had lost all its cohesion as the barbed points tortured the horses and the riders encountered the corpses left by the first attack. The French were stalled, unable to ride into the arrow flail, but unwilling to retreat. Horses and men fell, the drums beat on and the rearward horsemen were pushing the front ranks into the bloody ground where the pits waited and the arrows stung. Thomas shot another arrow, watched the red feathers whip into a horse’s breast, then fumbled in the arrow bag to find just one shaft left. He swore.

“Arrows?” Sam called, but no one had any to spare.

Thomas shot his last, then turned to find a gap in the men-at-arms that would let him escape the horsemen who would surely come now the arrows had run out, but there were no gaps.

He felt a heartbeat of pure terror. There was no escape and the French were coming. Then, almost without thinking, he put his right hand under the horn tip of the bow and launched it high over the English men-at-arms so it would fall behind them. The bow was an encumbrance now, so he would be rid of it, and he picked up a fallen shield, hoping to God it showed an English insignia, and pushed his left forearm into the tight loops. He drew his sword and stepped back between two of the lances held by the men-at-arms. Other archers were doing the same.

“Let the archers in!” the Earl of Northampton shouted. “Let them in!” But the men-at-arms were too fearful of the rapidly approaching French to open their files.

“Ready!” a man shouted. “Ready!” There was a note of hysteria in his voice. The French horsemen, now that the arrows were exhausted, were streaming up the slope between the corpses and the pits. Their lances were lowered and their spurs raked back as they demanded a last spurt from the horses before they struck the enemy. The trappers were flecked with mud and hung with arrows. Thomas watched a lance, held the unfamiliar shield high and thought how monstrous the enemy’s steel faces looked.

“You’ll be all right, lad.” A quiet voice spoke behind him. “Hold the shield high and go for the horse.”

Thomas snatched a look and saw it was the gray-haired Reginald Cobham, the old champion himself, standing in the front rank.

“Brace yourselves!” Cobham shouted.

The horses were on top of them, vast and high, lances reaching, the noise of the hooves and the rattle of mail overwhelming. Frenchmen were shouting victory as they leaned into the lunge.

“Now kill them!” Cobham shouted.

The lances struck the shields and Thomas was hurled back and a hoof thumped his shoulder, but a man behind pushed him upright so he was forced hard against the enemy horse. He had no room to use the sword and the shield was crushed against his side. There was the stench of horse sweat and blood in his nostrils. Something struck his helmet, making his skull ring and vision darken, then miraculously the pressure was gone and he glimpsed a patch of daylight and staggered into it, swinging the sword to where he thought the enemy was. “Shield up!” a voice screamed and he instinctively obeyed, only to have the shield battered down, but his dazed vision was sharpening and he could see a bright-colored trapper and a mailed foot in a big leather stirrup close to his left. He rammed his sword through the trapper and into the horse’s guts and the beast twisted away. Thomas was dragged along by the trapped blade, but managed to give it a violent tug that jerked it free so sharply that its recoil struck an English shield.

The charge had not broken the line, but had broken against it like a sea wave striking a cliff. The horses recoiled and the English men-at-arms advanced to hack at the horsemen who were relinquishing lances to draw their swords. Thomas was pushed aside by the men-at-arms. He was panting, dazed and sweat-blinded. His head was a blur of pain. An archer was lying dead in front of him, head crushed by a hoof. Why had the man no helmet? Then the men-at-arms were reeling back as more horsemen filed through the dead to thicken the fight, all of them pushing toward the Prince of Wales’s high banner. Thomas banged his shield hard into a horse’s face, felt a glancing blow on his sword and skewered the blade down the horse’s flank. The rider was fighting a man on the other side of his horse and Thomas saw a small gap between the saddle’s high pommel and the man’s mail skirt, and he shoved the sword up into the Frenchman’s belly, heard the man’s angry roar turn into a shriek, then saw the horse was falling toward him. He scrambled clear, pushing a man out of his path before the horse collapsed in a crash of armor and beating hooves. English men-at-arms swarmed over the dying beast, going to meet the next enemy. A horse with an iron garro deep in its haunch was rearing and striking with its hooves. Another horse tried to bite Thomas and he struck it with the shield, then flailed at its rider with his sword, but the man wheeled away and Thomas looked desperately for the next enemy.

“No prisoners!” the Earl screamed, seeing a man trying to lead a Frenchman out of the mêlée. The Earl had discarded his shield and was wielding his sword with both hands, hacking it like a woodman’s axe and daring any Frenchman to come and challenge him. They dared. More and more horsemen pushed into the horror; there seemed no end of them. The sky was bright with flags and streaked with steel, the grass was gouged by iron and slick with blood. A Frenchman rammed the bottom edge of his shield down onto an Englishman’s helmet, wheeled the horse, lunged a sword into an archer’s back, wheeled again and struck down at the man still dazed by the shield blow. “Montjoie St. Denis!” he shouted.

“St. George!” The Earl of Northampton, visor up and face streaked with blood, rammed his sword through a gap in a chanfron to take a horse’s eye. The beast reared and its rider fell to be trampled by a horse behind. The Earl looked for the Prince and could not see him, then could not search more, for a fresh conroi with white crosses on black shields was forging through the mêlée, pushing friend and foe alike from their path as they carried their lances toward the Prince’s standard.

Thomas saw a baffled lance coming at him and he threw himself to the ground where he curled into a ball and let the heavy horses crash by.

“Montjoie St. Denis!” the voices yelled above him as the Count of Astarac’s conroi struck home.

 

SIR GUILLAUME D’EVECQUE had seen nothing like it. He hoped he never saw it again. He saw a great army breaking itself against a line of men on foot.

It was true that the battle was not lost and Sir Guillaume had convinced himself it could yet be won, but he was also aware of an unnatural sluggishness in himself. He liked war. He loved the release of battle, he relished imposing his will on an enemy and he had ever profited from combat, yet he suddenly knew he did not want to charge up the hill. There was a doom in this place, and he pushed that thought away and kicked his spurs back. “Montjoie St. Denis!” he shouted, but knew he was just pretending the enthusiasm. No one else in the charge seemed afflicted by doubts. The knights were beginning to jostle each other as they strove to aim their lances at the English line. Very few arrows were flying now, and none at all were coming from the chaos ahead where the Prince of Wales’s banner flew so high. Horsemen were now charging home all along the line, hacking at the English ranks with swords and axe, but more and more men were angling across the slope to join the fury on the English right. It was there, Sir Guillaume told himself, that the battle would be won and the English broken. It would be hard work, of course, and bloody work, hacking through the prince’s troops, but once the French horsemen were in the rear of the English line it would collapse like rotted wood, and no amount of reinforcements from the top of the hill could stop that panicked rout. So fight, he told himself, fight, but there was still the nagging fear that he was riding into disaster. He had never felt anything like it and he hated it, cursing himself for being a coward!

A dismounted French knight, his helmet’s face-piece torn away and blood dripping from a hand holding a broken sword, while his other hand gripped the remnants of a shield that had been split into two, staggered down the hill, then dropped to his knees and vomited. A riderless horse, stirrups flapping, galloped white-eyed across the line of the charge with its torn trapper trailing in the grass. The turf here was flecked by the white feathers of fallen arrows that looked like a field of flowers.

“Go! Go! Go!” Sir Guillaume shouted at his men, and knew he was shouting at himself. He would never tell men to go on a battlefield, but to come, to follow, and he cursed himself for using the word and stared ahead, looking for a victim for his lance, and he watched for the pits and tried to ignore the mêlée that was just to his right. He planned to widen the mêlée by boring into the English line where it was still lightly engaged. Die a hero, he told himself, carry the damned lance right up the hill and let no man ever say that Sir Guillaume d’Evecque was a coward.

Then a great cheer sounded from his right and he dared look there, away from the pits. He saw the Prince of Wales’s great banner was toppling into the struggling men. The French were cheering and Sir Guillaume’s gloom lifted magically for it was a French banner that pressed ahead, going over the place where the Prince’s flag had flown, and then Sir Guillaume saw the banner. He saw it and stared at it. He saw a yale holding a cup and he pressed his knee to turn his horse and shouted at his men to follow him. “To war!” he shouted. To kill. And there was no more sluggishness and no more doubts. For Sir Guillaume had found his enemy.

 

THE KING SAW the enemy knights with the white-crossed shields pierce his son’s battle and then he watched his son’s banner fall. He could not see his son’s black armor. Nothing showed on his face.

“Let me go!” the Bishop of Durham demanded.

The King brushed a horsefly from his horse’s neck. “Pray for him,” he instructed the bishop.

“What the hell use will prayer be?” the bishop demanded, and hefted his fearful mace. “Let me go, sire!”

“I need you here,” the King said mildly, “and the boy must learn as I did.” I have other sons, Edward of England told himself, though none like that one. That son will be a great king one day, a warrior king, a scourge of our enemies. If he lives. And he must learn to live in the chaos and terror of battle. “You will stay,” he told the bishop firmly, then beckoned a herald. “That badge,” he said, pointing to the red banner with the yale, “whose is it?”

The herald stared at the banner for a long time, then frowned as if uncertain of his opinion.

“Well?” the King prompted him.

“I haven’t seen it in sixteen years,” the herald said, sounding dubious of his own judgement, “but I do believe it’s the badge of the Vexille family, sire.”

“The Vexilles?” the King asked.

“Vexilles?” the bishop roared. “Vexilles! Damned traitors. They fled from France in your great-grandfather’s reign, sire, and he gave them land in Cheshire. Then they sided with Mortimer.”

“Ah,” the King said, half smiling. So the Vexilles had supported his mother and her lover, Mortimer, who together had tried to keep him from the throne. No wonder they fought well. They were trying to avenge the loss of their Cheshire estates.

“The eldest son never left England,” the bishop said, staring down at the widening struggle on the slope. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the din of steel. “He was a strange fellow. Became a priest! Can you credit it? An eldest son! Didn’t like his father, he claimed, but we locked him up all the same.”

“On my orders?” the King asked.

“You were very young, sire, so one of your council made sure the Vexille priest couldn’t cause trouble. Sealed him up in a monastery, then beat and starved him till he was convinced he was holy. After that he was harmless so they put him into a country parish to rot. He must be dead by now.” The bishop frowned because the English line was bending backward, pushed by the conroi of Vexille knights. “Let me go down, sire,” he pleaded, “I pray you, let me take my men down.”

“I asked you to pray to God rather than to me.”

“I have a score of priests praying,” the bishop said, “and so do the French. We’re deafening God with our prayers. Please, sire, I beg you!”

The King relented. “Go on foot,” he told the bishop, “and with only one conroi.”

The bishop howled in triumph, then slid awkwardly off his destrier’s back. “Barratt!” he shouted to one of his men-at-arms. “Bring your fellows! Come on!” The bishop hefted his wickedly spiked mace, then ran down the hill, bellowing at the French that the time of their death had come.

The herald counted the conroi that followed the bishop down the slope. “Can twenty men make a difference, sire?” he asked the King.

“It will make small difference to my son,” the King said, hoping his son yet lived, “but a great difference to the bishop. I think I would have had an enemy in the Church for ever if I’d not released him to his passion.” He watched as the bishop thrust the rear English ranks aside and, still bellowing, waded into the mêlée. There was still no sign of the prince’s black armor, nor of his standard.

The herald backed his palfrey away from the King, who made the sign of the cross, then twitched his ruby-hilted sword to make certain the day’s earlier rain had not rusted the blade into the scabbard’s metal throat. The weapon moved easily enough and he knew he might need it yet, but for now he crossed his mailed hands on his saddle’s pommel and just watched the battle.

He would let his son win it, he decided. Or else lose his son.

The herald stole a look at his king and saw that Edward of England’s eyes were closed. The King was at prayer.

 

THE BATTLE HAD SPREAD along the hill. Every part of the English line was engaged now, though in most places the fighting was light. The arrows had taken their toll, but there was none left and so the French could ride right up to the dismounted men-at-arms. Some Frenchmen tried to break through, but most were content to shout insults in the hope of drawing a handful of the dismounted English out of the shield wall. But the English discipline held. They returned insult for insult, inviting the French to come and die on their blades.

Only where the Prince of Wales’s banner had flown was the fighting ferocious, and there, and for a hundred paces on either side, the two armies had become inextricably tangled. The English line had been torn, but it had not been pierced. Its rear ranks still defended the hill while the front ranks had been scattered into the enemy where they fought against the surrounding horsemen. The Earls of Northampton and Warwick had tried to keep the line steady, but the Prince of Wales had broken the formation by his eagerness to carry the fight to the enemy and the Prince’s bodyguard were now down the slope near to the pits where so many horses lay with broken legs. It was there that Guy Vexille had lanced the Prince’s standard-bearer so that the great flag, with its lilies and leopards and gilded fringe, was being trampled by the iron-shod hoofs of his conroi.

Thomas was twenty yards away, curled into the bloody belly of a dead horse and flinching every time another destrier trod near him. Noise overwhelmed him, but through the shrieks and hammering he could hear English voices still shouting defiance and he lifted his head to see Will Skeat with Father Hobbe, a handful of archers and two men-at-arms defending themselves against French horsemen. Thomas was tempted to stay in his blood-reeking haven, but he forced himself to scramble over the horse’s body and run to Skeat’s side. A French sword glanced off his helmet, he bounced off the rump of a horse, then stumbled into the small group.

“Still alive, lad?” Skeat said.

“Jesus,” Thomas swore.

“He ain’t interested. Come on, you bastard! Come on!” Skeat was calling to a Frenchman, but the enemy preferred to carry his unbroken lance toward the battle raging about the fallen standard. “They’re still coming,” Skeat said in tones of wonderment. “No end to the goddamn bastards.”

An archer in the prince’s green and white livery, without a helmet and bleeding from a deep shoulder wound, lurched toward Skeat’s group. A Frenchman saw him, casually wheeled his horse and chopped down with a battle-axe.

“The bastard!” Sam said, and, before Skeat could stop him, he ran from the group and leaped up onto the back of the Frenchman’s horse. He put an arm round the knight’s neck then simply fell backward, dragging the man from the high saddle. Two enemy men-at-arms tried to intervene, but the victim’s horse was in their way.

“Protect him!” Skeat shouted, and led his group to where Sam was beating fists at the Frenchman’s armor. Skeat pushed Sam away, lifted the Frenchman’s breastplate just enough to let a sword enter, then slid his blade into the man’s chest. “Bastard,” Skeat said. “Got no right to kill archers. Bastard.” He twisted the sword, rammed it in further, then yanked it free.

Sam lifted the battle-axe and grinned. “Proper weapon,” he said, then turned as the two would-be rescuers came riding in. “Bastards, bastards,” Sam shouted as he chopped the axe at the nearer horse. Skeat and one of the men-at-arms were flailing swords at the other beast. Thomas tried to protect them with his shield as he stabbed up at the Frenchman and felt his sword deflected by shield or armor, then the two horses, both bleeding, wheeled away.

“Stay together,” Skeat said, “stay together. Watch our backs, Tom.”

Thomas did not answer.

“Tom!” Skeat shouted.

But Thomas had seen the lance. There were thousands of lances on the field, but most of them were painted in spiraling colors, and this one was black, warped and feeble. It was the lance of St. George that had hung in the cobwebs of his childhood nave and now it was being used as the pole of a standard and the flag that hung from the silver blade was red as blood and embroidered with a silver yale. His heart lurched. The lance was here! All the mysteries he had tried so hard to avoid were on this battlefield. The Vexilles were here. His father’s killer was probably here.

“Tom!” Skeat shouted again.

Thomas just pointed at the flag. “I have to kill them.”

“Don’t be a fool, Tom,” Skeat said, then whipped back as a horseman crashed in from the lower slope. The man tried to veer away from the group of infantry, but Father Hobbe, the only man still carrying a bow, thrust the weapon into the horse’s front legs, tangling them and snapping the bow. The horse collapsed with a crash by their side and Sam whacked the axe into the screaming knight’s spine.

“Vexille!” Thomas shouted as loud as he could. “Vexille!”

“Lost his bloody head,” Skeat said to Father Hobbe.

“He hasn’t,” the priest said. He was without a weapon now, but when Sam had finished chopping his new axe through mail and leather, the priest took the dead Frenchman’s falchion that he hefted appreciatively.

“Vexille! Vexille!” Thomas screamed.

One of the knights about the yale standard heard the shout and turned his pig-snouted helmet. It seemed to Thomas that the man stared at him through the snout’s eye-slits for a long time, though it could only have been for a heartbeat or two because the man was assailed by footmen. He was defending himself skillfully, his horse dancing the battle steps to keep itself from being hamstrung, but the rider beat down one Englishman’s sword and slashed his left spur across the face of the other before turning the quick horse and killing the first man with a lunge of his sword. The second man reeled away and the pig-snouted knight turned and trotted straight at Thomas.

“Asking for bloody trouble,” Skeat growled, but went to Thomas’s side. The knight swerved at the last moment and beat down with his sword. Thomas parried and was shocked by the force of the man’s blow that stung his shield arm to his shoulder. The horse was gone, turned, came back and the knight beat at him again. Skeat lunged at the horse, but the destrier had a mail coat under its trapper and the sword slid away. Thomas parried again and was half beaten to his knees. Then the horseman was three paces away, the destrier was swiveling fast and the knight raised his sword hand and pushed up his pig-snout, and Thomas saw it was Sir Simon Jekyll.

Anger rose in Thomas like bile and, ignoring Skeat’s warning shout, he ran forward, sword swinging. Sir Simon parried the blow with contemptuous ease, the trained horse sidestepped delicately and Sir Simon’s blade was coming back fast. Thomas had to twist aside and even so, fast as he was, the blade clanged against his helmet with stunning force.

“This time you’ll die,” Sir Simon said, and he lunged with the blade, thrusting with killing force on Thomas’s mail-clad chest, but Thomas had tripped on a corpse and was already falling backward. The lunge pushed him down faster and he sprawled on his back, his head spinning from the blow to his helmet. There was no one to help him any more, for he had dashed away from Skeat’s group that was defending itself against a new rush of horsemen. Thomas tried to stand, but a pain ripped at his head and he was winded by the blow to his chest. Then Sir Simon was leaning down from his saddle and his long sword was seeking Thomas’s unprotected face. “Goddamn bastard,” Sir Simon said, then opened his mouth wide as though he was yawning. He stared at Thomas, then spewed a stream of blood that spattered Thomas’s face. A lance had gone clean through Sir Simon’s side and Thomas, shaking the blood from his eyes, saw that a Frenchman had thrust the blue and yellow lance. A horseman? Only the French were mounted, but Thomas had seen the horseman let go of the lance that was hanging from Sir Simon’s side and now the Englishman, eyes rolling, was swaying in his saddle, choking and dying. Then Thomas saw the trappers of the horsemen who had swept past him. They showed yellow hawks on a blue field.

Thomas staggered to his feet. Sweet Christ, he thought, but he had to learn how to fight with a sword. A bow was not enough. Sir Guillaume’s men were past him now, cutting into the Vexille conroi. Will Skeat shouted at Thomas to come back, but he stubbornly followed Sir Guillaume’s men. Frenchman was fighting Frenchman! The Vexilles had almost broken the English line, but now they had to defend their backs while English men-at-arms tried to haul them from their saddles.

“Vexille! Vexille!” Sir Guillaume shouted, not knowing which visored man was his enemy. He beat again and again on a man’s shield, bending him back in his saddle, then he chopped the sword down on the horse’s neck and the beast dropped, and an Englishman, a priest, was slashing the fallen knight’s head with a falchion.

A flash of rearing color made Sir Guillaume look to his right. The Prince of Wales’s banner had been rescued and raised. He looked back to find Vexille, but saw only a half-dozen horsemen with white crosses on their black shields. He spurred toward them, raised his own shield to fend off an axe blow and lunged his sword into a man’s thigh, twisted it clear, felt a blow on his back, turned the horse with his knee and parried a high sword blow. Men were shouting at him, demanding to know why he fought his own side, then the Vexille’s standard-bearer began to topple as his horse was hamstrung. Two archers were slashing at the beast’s legs and the silver yale fell into the mêlée as Henry Colley let go of the old lance to draw his sword.

“Bastards!” he shouted at the men who had hamstrung his horse. “Bastards!” He slashed the blade down, hacking into a man’s mailed shoulder, then a great roar made him turn to see a heavy man in plate and mail and with a crucifix about his neck, wielding a mace. Colley, still on his collapsing horse, swung at the bishop, who hammered the sword away with his shield and then slammed the mace down onto Colley’s helmet. “In the name of God!” the bishop roared as he dragged the spikes free of the mangled helmet. Colley was dead, his skull crushed, and the bishop swung the bloody mace at a horse with a yellow and blue trapper, but the rider swerved at the last instant.

Sir Guillaume never saw the bishop with his mace. Instead he had seen that one of the Vexille conroi had finer armor than the others and he raked back his spurs to reach that man, but felt his own horse faltering and he looked behind to glimpse, through the constricting slits in his visor, that Englishmen were hacking at his horse’s rear legs. He beat the swords back, but the animal was sinking down and a huge voice was shouting, “Clear my way! I want to kill the bastard. In the name of Christ, out of the way!” Sir Guillaume did not understand the words, but suddenly an arm was around his neck and he was being hauled out of the saddle. He shouted in anger, then had the breath driven from him as he thumped onto the ground. A man was holding him down and Sir Guillaume tried to hit him with his sword, but his wounded horse was thrashing beside him, threatening to roll on him and Sir Guillaume’s assailant dragged him free, then twisted the Frenchman’s sword away. “Just lie there!” A voice shouted at Sir Guillaume.

“Is the goddamned bastard dead?” the bishop roared.

“He’s dead!” Thomas shouted.

“Praise God! On! On! Kill!”

“Thomas?” Sir Guillaume squirmed.

“Don’t move!” Thomas said.

“I want Vexille!”

“They’ve gone!” Thomas shouted. “They’ve gone! Lie still!”

Guy Vexille, assailed from two sides and with his red banner fallen, had pulled his three remaining men back, but only to join the last of the French horsemen. The King himself, with his friend the King of Bohemia, was entering the mêlée. Although John of Bohemia was blind, he had insisted on fighting and so his bodyguard had tied their horses’ reins together and put the King’s destrier in their center so that he could not lose them. “Prague!” They shouted their war cry. “Prague!” The King’s son, Prince Charles, was also tied into the group. “Prague!” he shouted as the Bohemian knights led the last charge, except it was not a charge, but a blundering advance through a tangle of corpses and thrashing bodies and terrified horses.

The Prince of Wales still lived. The gold fillet had been half cut from his helmet and the top edge of his shield had been split in a half-dozen places, but now he led the countercharge and a hundred men went with him, snarling and screaming, wanting nothing else but to maul this last enemy who came in the dying light to the killing place where so many Frenchmen had died. The Earl of Northampton, who had been mustering the rearward ranks of the prince’s battle to keep them in line, sensed that the battle had turned. The vast pressure against the English men-at-arms had weakened and though the French were trying again their best men were bloodied or dead, and the new ones were coming too slowly and so he shouted at his footmen to follow him.

“Just kill them!” he shouted. “Just kill them!”

Archers, men-at-arms, and even hobelars, who had come from their place inside the wagon circles that protected the guns on the flanks of the line, swarmed at the French. To Thomas, crouching beside Sir Guillaume, it was like the mindless rage at the bridge of Caen all over again. This was madness released, a blood-crazed madness, but the French would suffer for it. The English had endured deep into the long summer evening and they wanted revenge for the terror of watching the big horses come at them, and so they clawed and beat and slashed at the royal horsemen. The Prince of Wales led them, fighting beside archers and men-at-arms, hacking down horses and butchering their riders in a frenzy of blood. The King of Majorca died and the Count of St. Pol and the Duke of Lorraine and the Count of Flanders. Then Bohemia’s flag with its three white feathers fell, and the blind King was dragged down to be butchered by axes, maces and swords. A king’s ransom died with the King, and his son bled to death on his father’s body, as his bodyguard, hampered by the dead horses that were still tied to the living beasts, were slaughtered one after the other by Englishmen no longer shouting a war cry but screaming in a howling frenzy like lost souls. They were streaked with blood, stained and spattered and soaked in it, but the blood was French. The Prince of Wales cursed the dying Bohemians, blaming them for barring his approach to the French King, whose blue and gold banner still flew. Two English men-at-arms were hacking at the King’s horse, the royal bodyguard was spurring to kill them, more men in English livery were running to bring Philip down and the Prince wanted to be there, to be the man who took the enemy King captive, but one of the Bohemian horses, dying, lurched on its side and the Prince was still wearing his spurs and one of them became caught in the dying horse’s trapper. The Prince lurched, was trapped, and it was then that Guy Vexille saw the black armor and the royal surcoat and the broken fillet of gold and saw, too, that the Prince was unbalanced amidst the dying horses.

So Guy Vexille turned and charged.

Thomas saw Vexille turn. He could not reach the charging horseman with his sword, for that would mean clambering over the same horses where the Prince was trapped, but under his right hand was a black ash shaft tipped with silver, and he snatched up the lance and ran at the charging man. Skeat was there too, scrambling over the Bohemian horses with his old sword.

The lance of St. George struck Guy Vexille on the chest. The silver blade crumpled and tangled with the crimson banner, but the old ash shaft had just enough strength to knock the horseman back and keep his sword from the Prince, who was being pulled free by two of his men-at-arms. Vexille hacked again, reaching far from his saddle and Will Skeat bellowed at him and thrust his sword hard up at Vexille’s waist, but the black shield deflected the lunge and Vexille’s trained horse instinctively turned into the attack and the rider slashed down hard.

“No!” Thomas shouted. He thrust the lance again, but it was a feeble weapon and the dry ash splintered against Vexille’s shield. Will Skeat was sinking, blood showing at the ragged gash in his helmet. Vexille raised his sword to strike at Skeat a second time as Thomas stumbled forward. The sword fell, slicing into Skeat’s head, then the blank mask of Vexille’s dark visor swung toward Thomas. Will Skeat was on the ground, not moving. Vexille’s horse turned to bring its master to where he could kill most efficiently and Thomas saw death in the Frenchman’s bright sword, but then, in panicked desperation, he rammed the broken end of the black lance into the destrier’s open mouth and gouged the ragged wood deep into the animal’s tongue. The stallion sheered away, screaming and rearing and Vexille was thrown hard against his saddle’s cantle.

The horse, eyes white behind its chanfron and mouth dripping blood, turned back to Thomas, but the Prince of Wales had been freed from the dying horse and he brought two men-at-arms to attack Vexille’s other flank and the horseman parried the Prince’s sword blow, then saw he must be overwhelmed and so drove back his spurs to take his horse through the mêlée and away from danger.

“Calix meus inebrians!” Thomas shouted. He did not know why. The words just came to him, his father’s dying words, but they made Vexille look back. He stared through the eye slits, saw the dark-haired man who was holding his own banner, then a new surge of vengeful Englishmen spilled down the slope and he pricked his horse through the carnage and the dying men and the broken dreams of France.

A cheer sounded from the English hilltop. The King had ordered his mounted reserve of knights to charge the French and as those men lowered their lances still more horses were being hurried from the baggage park so that more men could mount and pursue the beaten enemy.

John of Hainault, Lord of Beaumont, took the French King’s reins and dragged Philip away from the mêlée. The horse was a remount, for one royal horse had already been killed, while the King himself had taken a wound in the face because he had insisted on fighting with his visor up so that his men would know he was on the field.

“It is time go, sire,” the Lord of Beaumont said gently.

“Is it over?” Philip asked. There were tears in his eyes and incredulity in his voice.

“It’s over, sire,” the Lord of Beaumont said. The English were howling like dogs and the chivalry of France was twitching and bleeding on a hillside. John of Hainault did not know how it had happened, only that the battle, the oriflamme and the pride of France were all lost. “Come, sire,” he said, and dragged the King’s horse away. Groups of French knights, their horses’ trappers rattling with arrows, were crossing the valley to the far woods that were dark with the coming night.

“That astrologer, John,” the French King said.

“Sire?”

“Have him put to death. Bloodily. You hear me? Bloodily!” The King was weeping as, with the handful of his bodyguard that was left, he rode away.

More and more Frenchmen were fleeing to seek safety in the gathering dark and their retreat turned into a gallop as the first English horsemen of the battle burst through the remnants of their battered line to begin the pursuit.

The English slope seemed to twitch as the men at arms wandered among the wounded and dead. The twitching was the jerking of the dying men and horses. The valley floor was scattered with the Genoese who had been killed by their own paymasters. It was suddenly very quiet. There was no clang of steel, no hoarse shouts and no drums. There were moans and weeping and sometimes a gasp, but it seemed quiet. The wind stirred the fallen banners and flickered the white feathers of the fallen arrows that had reminded Sir Guillaume of a spread of flowers.

And it was over.

 

SIR WILLIAM SKEAT LIVED. He could not speak, there was no life in his eyes and he seemed deaf. He could not walk, though he seemed to try when Thomas lifted him, but then his legs crumpled and he sagged to the bloody ground.

Father Hobbe lifted Skeat’s helmet away, doing it with an extraordinary gentleness. Blood poured from Skeat’s gray hair and Thomas gagged when he saw the sword cut in the scalp. There were scraps of skull, strands of hair and Skeat’s brain all open to the air.

“Will?” Thomas knelt in front of him. “Will?”

Skeat looked at him, but did not seem to see him. He had a half smile and empty eyes.

“Will!” Thomas said.

“He’s going to die, Thomas,” Father Hobbe said softly.

“He is not! Goddamn it, he is not! You hear me? He will live. You bloody pray for him!”

“I will pray, God knows how I will pray,” Father Hobbe soothed Thomas, “but first we must doctor him.”

Eleanor helped. She washed Will Skeat’s scalp, then she and Father Hobbe laid scraps of broken skull like pieces of shattered tile. Afterward Eleanor tore a strip of cloth from her blue dress and gently bound the strip about Will Skeat’s skull, tying it beneath his chin so that when it was done he looked like an old woman in a scarf. He had said nothing as Eleanor and the priest bandaged him, and if he had felt any pain it did not show on his face.

“Drink, Will,” Thomas said, and held out a water bottle taken from a dead Frenchman, but Skeat ignored the offer. Eleanor took the bottle and held it to his mouth, but the water just spilled down his chin. It was dark by then. Sam and Jake had made a fire, using a battle-axe to chop French lances for fuel. Will Skeat just sat by the flames. He breathed, but nothing else.

“I have seen it before,” Sir Guillaume told Thomas. He had hardly spoken since the battle, but now sat beside Thomas. He had watched his daughter tend Skeat and he had accepted food and drink from her, but he had shrugged away her conversation.

“Will he recover?” Thomas asked.

Sir Guillaume shrugged. “I saw a man cut through the skull. He lived another four years, but only because the sisters in the abbaye looked after him.”

“He will live!” Thomas said.

Sir Guillaume lifted one of Skeat’s hands, held it for a few seconds, then let it drop. “Maybe,” he sounded skeptical. “You were fond of him?”

“He’s like a father,” Thomas said.

“Fathers die,” Sir Guillaume said bleakly. He looked drained, like a man who had turned his sword against his own king and failed in his duty.

“He will live,” Thomas said stubbornly.

“Sleep,” Sir Guillaume said, “I will watch him.”

Thomas slept among the dead, in the battle line where the wounded moaned and the night wind stirred the white feathers flecking the valley. Will Skeat was no different in the morning. He just sat, eyes vacant, gazing at nothing and stinking because he had fouled himself.

“I shall find the Earl,” Father Hobbe said, “and have him send Will back to England.”

The army stirred itself sluggishly. Forty English men-at-arms and as many archers were buried in Crécy’s church yard, but the hundreds of French corpses, all but for the great princes and noblest lords, were left on the hill. The folk of Crécy could bury them if they wished, Edward of England did not care.

Father Hobbe looked for the Earl of Northampton, but two thousand French infantry had arrived just after dawn, coming to reinforce an army that had already been broken, and in the misty light they had thought the mounted men who greeted them were friends and then the horsemen dropped their visors, couched their lances and put back their spurs. The Earl led them.

Most of the English knights had been denied a chance to fight on horseback in the previous day’s battle, but now, this Sunday morning, they’d been given their moment and the great destriers had torn bloody gaps in the marching ranks, then wheeled to cut the survivors into ragged terror. The French had fled, pursued by the implacable horsemen, who had cut and thrust until their arms were weary with the killing.

Back on the hill between Crécy and Wadicourt a pile of enemy banners was gathered. The flags were torn and some were still damp with blood. The oriflamme was carried to Edward who folded it and ordered the priests to give thanks. His son lived, the battle was won and all Christendom would know how God favored the English cause. He declared he would spend this one day on the field to mark the victory, then march on. His army was still tired, but it had boots now and it would be fed. Cattle were roaring as archers slaughtered them and more archers were bringing food from the hill where the French army had abandoned its supplies. Other men were plucking arrows from the field and tying them into sheaves while their women plundered the dead.

The Earl of Northampton came back to Crécy’s hill roaring and grinning. “Like slaughtering sheep!” he exulted, then roamed up and down the line trying to relive the excitements of the last two days. He stopped by Thomas and grinned at the archers and their women.

“You look different, young Thomas!” he said happily, but then looked down and saw Will Skeat sitting like a child with his head bound by the blue scarf. “Will?” the Earl said in puzzlement. “Sir William?”

Skeat just sat.

“He was cut through the skull, my lord,” Thomas said.

The Earl’s bombast fled like air from a pricked bladder. He slumped in his saddle, shaking his head. “No,” he protested, “no. Not Will!” He still had a bloody sword in his hand, but now he wiped the blade through the mane of his horse and pushed it into the scabbard. “I was going to send him back to Brittany,” he said. “Will he live?”

No one answered.

“Will?” the Earl called, then clumsily dismounted from the clinging saddle. He crouched by the Yorkshireman. “Will? Talk to me, Will!”

“He must go to England, my lord,” Father Hobbe said.

“Of course,” the Earl said.

“No,” Thomas said.

The Earl frowned at him. “No?”

“There is a doctor in Caen, my lord,” Thomas spoke in French now, “and I would take him there. This doctor works miracles, my lord.”

The Earl smiled sadly. “Caen is in French hands again, Thomas,” he said, “and I doubt they’ll welcome you.”

“He will be welcome,” Sir Guillaume said, and the Earl noticed the Frenchman and his Unfamiliar livery for the first time.

“He is a prisoner, my lord,” Thomas explained, “but also a friend. We serve you, so his ransom is yours, but he alone can take Will to Caen.”

“Is it a large ransom?” the Earl asked.

“Vast,” Thomas said.

“Then your ransom, sir,” the Earl spoke to Sir Guillaume, “is Will Skeat’s life.” He stood and took his horse’s reins from an archer, then turned back to Thomas. The boy looked different, he thought, looked like a man. He had cut his hair, that was it. Chopped it, anyway. And he looked like a soldier now, like a man who could lead archers into battle. “I want you in the spring, Thomas,” he said. “There’ll be archers to lead, and if Will can’t do it, then you must. Look after him now, but in the spring you’ll serve me again, you hear?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I hope your doctor can work miracles,” the Earl said, then he walked on.

Sir Guillaume had understood the things that had been said in French, but not the rest and now he looked at Thomas. “We go to Caen?” he asked.

“We take Will to Doctor Mordecai,” Thomas said.

“And after that?”

“I go to the Earl,” Thomas said curtly.

Sir Guillaume flinched. “And Vexille, what of him?”

“What of him?” Thomas asked brutally. “He’s lost his damned lance.” He looked at Father Hobbe and spoke in English. “Is my penance done, father?”

Father Hobbe nodded. He had taken the broken lance from Thomas and entrusted it to the King’s confessor who had promised that the relic would be taken to Westminster. “You have done your penance,” the priest said.

Sir Guillaume spoke no English, but he must have understood Father Hobbe’s tone for he gave Thomas a hurt look. “Vexille still lives,” he said. “He killed your father and my family. Even God wants him dead!” There were tears in Sir Guillaume’s eye. “Would you leave me as broken as the lance?” he asked Thomas.

“What would you have me do?” Thomas demanded.

“Find Vexille. Kill him.” He spoke fiercely, but Thomas said nothing. “He has the Grail!” the Frenchman insisted.

“We don’t know that,” Thomas said angrily. God and Christ, he thought, but spare me! I can be an archers’ leader. I can go to Caen and let Mordecai work his miracle and then lead Skeat’s men into battle. We can win for God, for Will, for the King and for England. He turned on the Frenchman. “I am an English archer,” he said harshly, “not a knight of the round table.”

Sir Guillaume smiled. “Tell me, Thomas,” he said gently, “was your father the eldest or a younger son?”

Thomas opened his mouth. He was about to say that of course Father Ralph had been a younger son, then realized he did not know. His father had never said, and that meant that perhaps his father had hidden the truth as he had hidden so many things.

“Think hard, my lord,” Sir Guillaume said pointedly, “think hard. And remember, the Harlequin maimed your friend and the Harlequin lives.”

I am an English archer, Thomas thought, and I want nothing more.

But God wants more, he thought, but he did not want that burden.

It was enough that the sun shone on summer fields, on white feathers and dead men.

And that Hookton was avenged.