“God knows,” Hook said. The king, his companions, and every other man-at-arms had curbed their horses at the hill’s crest from where they now gazed northward.
Then Hook himself reached the skyline and he too stared.
Ahead of him the ground fell away to a village that lay in a small green valley. A road climbed from the village, leading onto a wide reach of land that was bare earth beneath the glowering sky. That bare plateau had been plowed, and on either side of the newly cut furrows were thick woods. The battlements of a small castle just showed above the trees to the west. A banner flew from the castellated tower, but it was too far away to see what badge it showed.
Something about the lay of the land was familiar, then Hook remembered it. “I’ve been here before,” he said to no one in particular. “Me and Melisande, we were here.”
“You were?” Tom Scarlet answered, but he was not really paying attention.
“We met a horseman here,” Hook said, staring north in a daze, “and he told us the name of the place, but I can’t remember it.”
“Must have a name, I suppose,” Scarlet said absently.
More Englishmen reached the crest and stopped there to stare. No one spoke much and many made the sign of the cross.
Because in front of them, and as numerous as the sands on the shore or as the stars in the sky, was the enemy. The forces of France and Burgundy were at the plowland’s far end and they were a multitude. Their bright banners boasted of their numbers and their banners were uncountable.
The might of France blocked the road to Calais and the English were trapped.
Henry, Earl of Chester, Duke of Aquitaine, Lord of Ireland, and King of England, was given a new and savage energy by the sight of the enemy. “Form battle!” he shouted. “Form battle!” He galloped his horse across the face of his gathering army. “Obey your leaders! They know where you should be, form on their standards! By the grace of God we fight this day! Form battle!”
The sun was low behind the lowering clouds and the French army was still gathering under banners as thick as trees. “If every banner is a lord,” Thomas Evelgold said, “and if every lord leads ten men, how many men is that?”
“Goddam thousands,” Hook said.
“And ten’s a low number,” the centenar said, “very low. More like a hundred men for every banner, maybe two hundred!”
“Sweet Jesus,” Hook said and tried counting the enemy flags, but they were too many. All he knew was that the enemy was vast and England’s army was small. “God help us,” he could not resist saying, and once again he had the shivering recollection of the blood and screams in Soissons.
“Someone has to help us,” Evelgold said briskly, then turned to his archers. “We’re on the right. Dismount! Stakes and bows! Look lively now! I want boys for the horses! Come on, don’t dawdle! Move your goddam bones! We’ve got some dying to do!”
The horses were left in the pastures beside the village as the army climbed the shallow slope to the plateau. The enemy could not be seen from the small valley, but as Hook breasted the rise onto the plowland the French were visible again and he felt his fears crawl back. What he saw was a proper army. Not a sickly, disheveled band of fugitives, but a proud, massed army come to punish the men who had dared invade France.
The English vanguard was on the right now, and its archers were farthest to the right where they were joined by half the archers who had formed the army’s center. The other half joined the rearguard who now formed on the left. So the wings of the army were each a mass of archers who flanked the men-at-arms who made a line between them.
“Sweet Christ,” Tom Scarlet said, “I’ve seen more men at a horse fair.”
He was pointing to the English men-at-arms. There were fewer than a thousand of them and they made a pathetically small line at the center of the array. The archers were far more numerous. Over two thousand were now assembled on each flank. “Stakes!” A knight wearing a green surcoat galloped along the face of the archers, “plant your stakes, lads!”
Sir John, who had formed with the men-at-arms in the line’s center, walked to where the archers readied their stakes. “We wait to see if they attack,” he explained, “and if not we’ll fight them in the morning!”
“Why don’t we just run away in the dark?” a man asked.
“I didn’t hear that question!” Sir John shouted, then went on down the line, telling men to be ready for a French assault.
The archers were not in close array like the men-at-arms who waited shoulder to armored shoulder in a line four men deep. The bowmen, instead, needed room to pull their long bowstaves and, in response to shouted orders, had moved some paces ahead of the men-at-arms where they scattered, each man finding a space. Hook was at the very front with the rest of Sir John’s men. He reckoned around two hundred archers were in line with him, the rest were behind in a dozen loose ranks where they now hammered their stakes so that the points faced toward the French. Once the stakes were in place the exposed point needed re-sharpening after the hammering it had received. “Stand in front of your stake!” the green-surcoated man shouted. “Don’t let the enemy see it!”
“Bastards aren’t blind,” Will of the Dale grumbled, “they must have seen what we were doing.”
The French were watching. They were a half-mile away, still arriving, a mass of color on horseback beneath banners brighter than the sky, which was becoming ever darker as the clouds thickened. Most of the French were milling around the skyline where tents were being erected, but hundreds rode southward to gaze at England’s army.
“I bet the bastards are laughing at us,” Tom Scarlet said. “They’re probably pissing themselves with laughter.”
The nearest enemy horsemen were just a quarter-mile away, standing or walking their horses in the plowland, and just gazing at the small army that faced them. To left and right the woods looked black in the fading evening light. Some archers, their stakes hammered home, were going into those woods to empty their bowels in the thick undergrowth of hawthorn, holly, and hazel, but most archers just stared back at the enemy and Hook reckoned Tom Scarlet was right. The French had to be laughing. They already had at least four or five men for every Englishman, and their forces were still arriving at the northern end of the field. Hook dropped to one knee on the wet ground, made the sign of the cross, and prayed to Saint Crispinian. He was not the only archer who prayed. Dozens of men were on their knees, as were some men-at-arms. Priests were walking among the doomed army, offering blessings, while the French walked their horses across the plowland, and Hook, opening his eyes, imagined their laughter, their scorn at this pathetic army that had defied them, had tried to escape them and now was trapped by them. “Save us,” he prayed to Saint Crispinian, but the saint said nothing in reply and Hook thought his prayer must have been lost in the great dark emptiness beyond the ominous clouds.
It began to rain properly. It was a cold, heavy rain and, as the wind dropped, the drops fell with a malevolent intensity that made the archers hurriedly unstring their bows and coil the cords into their hats and helmets to keep them from being soaked. The English heralds had ridden ahead of the array to be met by their French colleagues, and Hook saw the men bow to each other from their saddles. After a while the English heralds rode back, their gray horses spattered with mud from hooves to belly.
“No fight tonight, boys!” Sir John brought that news to the archers. “We stay where we are! No fires up here! You’re to stay silent! The enemy will do us the honor of fighting tomorrow, so try and sleep! No fight tonight!” He rode on down the archers’ line, his voice fading in the seethe of the hard rain.