Cartwright stood and strapped the skirt into place. The skirt was leather, covered with mail and then plated with overlapping strips of steel to protect Sir John’s groin. Sir John was thinking of his archers trying to sleep in the driving rain. They would be tired, wet and cold in the morning, but he did not doubt they would fight. He heard stones scraping on blades. Arrows, swords, and axes were being sharpened.
The breastplate and backplate came next, the heaviest pieces, made of Bordeaux steel like the rest of the plate, and Cartwright deftly secured the buckles, then strapped on the rerebraces that covered Sir John’s upper arms, the vambraces for his forearms, more roundels for the elbows, and then, with a bow, offered Sir John the plate-covered gauntlets that had their leather palms cut out so Sir John could feel his weapons’ hilts with bare hands. Espaliers covered the vulnerable place where breastplate and backplate joined, then Cartwright strapped the hinged bevor about Sir John’s neck. Some men wore a chain aventail to cover the space between helmet and breastplate, but the finely shaped steel bevor was better than any mail, though Sir John frowned irritably when he tried to turn his head.
“Should I loosen the straps, Sir John?”
“No, no,” Sir John said.
“Your arms, Sir John?” Cartwright hinted gently, and then pulled the surcoat over his master’s head, helped Sir John’s arms into the wide sleeves, then smoothed the linen that was embroidered with the crowned lion and blazoned with the cross of Saint George. Cartwright buckled the sword belt into place and hung the big sword, Darling, which was Sir John’s favorite, from its studs. “You will entrust the scabbard with me, Sir John, in the morning?” Cartwright asked.
“Of course.” Sir John always discarded his scabbard before a fight because a scabbard could tangle a man’s legs. When battle was close Darling would rest in a leather loop, her blade bare.
A leather hood was laced over Sir John’s head, and it was done. The hood would help cushion the helmet which Sir John took, then handed back to Cartwright. “Take the visor off,” he ordered.
“But…”
“Take it off!”
Once, in a tournament in Lyons, Sir John had managed to knock closed the visor of an opposing swordsman and the man’s subsequent half-blindness had made him easy to defeat. Tomorrow, he thought, an Englishman would need every small advantage he could find.
“I believe the enemy have crossbows,” Cartwright said humbly.
“Take it off.”
The visor was removed and Cartwright, with a small bow, handed the helmet back to Sir John. Sir John would put it on later and Cartwright would buckle the helm to the espaliers, but for now Sir John was ready.
It rained. Out in the dark a horse whinnied and thunder sounded. Sir John picked up the strip of purple and white silk that was his wife’s favor and kissed it before stuffing the silk into the narrow space between bevor and breastplate. Some men tied their women’s favors about their necks and Sir John, off balance, had once grabbed such a favor and so pulled an enemy off his horse and then killed him. If, tomorrow, an enemy seized the purple and white it would come free easily and not topple Sir John. Every small advantage. Sir John flexed his arms and found everything satisfactory, and so gave a grim smile. “Thank you, Cartwright,” he said.
Cartwright bowed his head and spoke the words he had always spoken, right from the very first time he had armored his master. “Sir John,” he said, “you are dressed to kill.”
As were thirty thousand Frenchmen.
“What you should do,” Hook told Melisande, “is go away. Go tonight. Take all our coins, whatever you can carry, and go.”
“Go where?” she demanded.
“Find your father,” Hook said. They were talking in the English encampment, which lay in the lower ground south of the long plowed field. The small cottages of the village had been taken by lords, and Hook could hear the sound of hammers on steel as the armorers made the last adjustments to expensive plate. The sound was sharp, drowned by the seethe of the unending rain. To the east of the village the army’s wagons were parked, their spoked wheels lit by the few fires that struggled to survive the downpour. The French army was out of sight from the low ground, but their presence was betrayed by the dull glow of their campfires reflecting from the underside of the dark clouds. Those clouds were suddenly thrown into clear view by a fork of lightning that zigzagged into the eastern woods. A moment later a clap of thunder filled the universe like the sound of some monstrous cannon.
“I chose to be with you,” Melisande said stubbornly.
“We’re going to die,” Hook said.
“No,” she protested, but without much conviction.
“You talked to Father Christopher,” Hook said remorselessly, “and he talked to the heralds. He reckons there are thirty thousand Frenchmen. We’ve got six thousand men.”
Melisande huddled closer to Hook, trying to find shelter under the cloak they shared. They had their backs to an oak tree, but it offered small protection against the rain. “Melisande was married to a king of Jerusalem,” she said. Hook said nothing, letting her say whatever it was she needed to say. “And the king died,” she went on, “and all the men said she must go to a convent and say prayers, but she didn’t! She made herself queen, and she was a great queen!”
“You’re my queen,” Hook said.
Melisande ignored the clumsy compliment. “And when I was in the convent? I had one friend. She was older, much older, Sister Beatrice, and she told me to go away. She told me I had to find my own life, and I didn’t think I could, but then you came. Now I shall do what Queen Melisande did. I shall do what I want.” She shivered. “I will stay with you.”
“I’m an archer,” Hook said bleakly, “just an archer.”
“No, you are a ventenar! Tomorrow, who knows, maybe a centenar? And one day you will have land. We will have land.”
“Tomorrow is Saint Crispinian’s Day,” Hook said, unable to imagine owning land.
“And he has not forgotten you! Tomorrow he will be with you,” Melisande said.
Hook hoped that was true. “Do one thing for me,” he said, “wear your father’s jupon.”
She hesitated, then he felt her nod. “I will,” she promised.
“Hook!” Thomas Evelgold’s voice barked from the darkness. “Time to take your boys forward!” Tom Evelgold paused, waiting for a response, and Melisande clutched Hook. “Hook!” Evelgold shouted again.
“I’m coming!”
“I’ll see you again,” Melisande said, “before…” her voice trailed away.
“You’ll see me again,” Hook said, and he kissed her fiercely before relinquishing the cloak to her. “I’m coming!” he shouted to Tom Evelgold again.
None of his archers had been sleeping because none could sleep in the drenching rain beneath the thunder. They grumbled as they followed Hook up the gentle slope to the great stretch of black plowland where, for a long while, they blundered around searching for the picquet they were to relieve. Hook finally discovered Walter Magot and his men a hundred paces ahead of where the sharpened stakes were still positioned. “Tell me you left me a big fire and a pot of broth,” Magot greeted him.
“Thick broth, Walter, barley, beef and parsnips. Couple of turnips in it as well.”
“You’ll hear the French,” Magot said. “They’re walking their horses. If they get too close you sing out and they go away.”
Hook peered northward. The fires in the French camp were bright despite the rain, their flames reflected in rain-driven flickers from the water standing in the furrows and the same distant firelight outlined men leading horses in the field. “They want the horses warm for the morning,” Hook said.
“Bastards want to charge us, don’t they?” Magot said. “Come morning, all those big men on big goddam horses.”