“They won’t?” Magot asked.
“We have to get past them to reach Calais, so maybe we’ll have to cut our way through them.”
“Jesus,” Evelgold muttered.
“They want us to attack them, Sir John?” Magot asked.
“I would, if I were them!” Sir John turned to stare at the enemy. “They don’t want to cross this ground any more than we do, but they don’t need to cross it. We do. We have to reach Calais or we die here of starvation. So if they don’t attack us, we have to attack them.”
“Jesus,” Evelgold said again, and Hook tried to imagine the effort that would be needed to cross that half-mile of sucking, slippery, clinging mud. Let the French attack, he thought, and suddenly shivered violently. He was cold, he was hungry, he was tired. The fear came in waves and was turning his bowels to water. He was not the only one, lots of men were slipping into the woods to empty their bowels.
“I need to go to the woods,” he said.
“If you need to shit, do it here,” Sir John said harshly, then shouted at the massed archers. “No one’s to use the woods!” He feared that men, losing courage, would hide in the trees. “You’re to shit where you stand!”
“Shit and die,” Tom Evelgold said.
“And go to hell with fouled breeches,” Sir John snarled, “who cares?” He looked at each of his sergeants in turn, then spoke with a quiet intensity. “This battle’s not lost. Remember, we have archers, they don’t.”
“But we don’t have enough arrows,” Evelgold said.
“Then make each one count,” Sir John said, impatient with his centenar’s pessimism, then scowled at Hook. “Jesus, man, can’t you do that upwind of me?”
“Sorry, Sir John.”
Sir John grinned. “At least you can take a shit. Try doing that in full armor. I tell you, we’re not going to smell like lilies by the time we’ve finished our work today.” He gazed at the enemy, his bright eyes looking at the oriflamme. “And one last thing,” he said forcefully, “no one’s to start taking prisoners until we give the order that it’s safe to capture instead of kill.”
“You think we’ll take prisoners?” Evelgold asked with astonished disbelief.
“If men try to take prisoners too soon they weaken the line,” Sir John said, ignoring the question. “You have to fight and kill until the bastards can fight no more, and only then can you set about finding ransoms.” He clapped Evelgold on a mail-clad shoulder. “Tell your lads we’ll be feasting on captured French provisions tonight.”
Either that, Hook thought, or eating hell’s rations. He struggled back to his men who each stood by a stake. Those stakes, over two thousand of them on this right flank of the English army, made a dense thicket of sharpened points. Men could move among them easily enough, but no warhorse could maneuver about them.
“What did Sir John want?” Will of the Dale asked.
“To tell you that we’ll be eating French rations tonight.”
“He thinks they’ll take us prisoner?” Will asked skeptically.
“No, he thinks we’ll win.”
That prompted some bitter laughter. Hook ignored it and watched the enemy. The front rank of their dismounted men-at-arms stretched across the skyline, thick with the metal points of shortened lances. Still they did not move and still the English waited. French horsemen went on exercising their destriers and, because the horses disliked the thick furrows, many of the knights went to the grassy pastures beyond the woods. The sun climbed higher behind the thinning clouds. The king’s emissaries, sent to make an offer of peace, had met with a similar group of Frenchmen and now rode back across the plowland and, moments later, a rumor spread that the French had agreed to let the English pass, then the rumor was denied. “If they don’t want to fight,” Tom Scarlet said, “then perhaps they’ll just stand there all day!”
“We have to get past them, Tom.”
“Jesus, we could sneak off tonight! Go back to Harfleur.”
“The king won’t do that.”
“Why not for God’s sake? He wants to die?”
“He’s got God on his side,” Hook said.
Tom shivered. “God might have sent us a decent breakfast.”
Women brought what little food they had hoarded against this day. Melisande gave Hook an oatcake. “We share it,” Hook said.
“It’s for you,” she insisted. There was mold on the oats, but Hook ate half anyway and gave Melisande the other half. There was no ale, just water from a stream that Melisande brought in an old leather wine bottle. The water tasted rank. Melisande stood beside him and stared at the French. “So many,” she said quietly.
“They’re not moving,” Hook said.
“So what will happen?”
“We’ll have to attack them.”
She shivered. “You think my father’s there?”
“I’m sure of it.”
She said nothing. They waited. Waited. The trumpets and drums still sounded, but the musicians were tiring and the music was less exuberant. Hook could hear robins singing fitfully among the trees, some of which had already lost their leaves so that their branches were gaunt as scaffolds against the gray sky. The glistening wet plowland between the waiting armies was flitting with fieldfares and redwings that sought worms in the furrows. Hook thought of home, of the cows being milked, the sound of rutting stags in the woods, the shortening evenings and firelight in the cottages.
Then there was a stir and Hook, startled back to reality, saw that the king, mounted once again on the small white horse and accompanied only by his standard-bearer, had ridden out ahead of the army. He was coming toward the archers on the right flank and his horse, troubled by the uncertain footing, was lifting its hooves high. The king had taken off his crowned helm and the small wind tousled his short brown hair, making him look younger than his twenty-eight years. He curbed the horse a few paces in front of the foremost stakes and the centenars shouted at their men to take off their helmets and kneel. This time the king accepted the obeisance, waiting until all two and a half thousand archers were on their knees.
“Bowmen of England!” the king called, then was silent as the men shuffled closer to hear him. Cased bows and poleaxes were slung on their shoulders. Some men were armed with foresters’ axes or lead-weighted mallets. Most had a sword, though some carried nothing except a bow and a knife. Those with helmets had taken off their bascinets and others clawed back their mail hoods as they stared at their bareheaded king.
“Bowmen of England!” Henry called again, and there was a catch in his voice, so that he paused again. The wind stirred the mane of his horse. “We fight today because of my quarrel!” the king shouted, his voice clear and confident now. “Our enemy deny me the crown that God has granted me! Today they believe they will humble us! Today they believe they will drag me as a prisoner before the crowds in Paris!” He paused as a murmur of protest went through the hundreds of bowmen. “Our enemy,” the king went on, “have threatened to cut off the fingers of every Englishman who draws a bow!” The murmur was louder now, a growl of indignation, and Hook remembered the square in Soissons where the cutting off of fingers had just been the start of the horror. “Of every Welshman who draws a bow!” the king added, and a ripple of cheers sounded from among the archers’ ranks.
“All that they believe,” the king called, “yet they have forgotten God’s will. They are blind to Saint George and to Saint Edward who watch over us, and it is not just those saints who offer us their protection! This day is the feast of Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian, and those saints want vengeance for the evils done to them at Soissons.” He paused again, but no murmur sounded. To most of the archers Soissons was a name that meant nothing, but they were still listening intently. “It has fallen to us,” the king said, “to wreak that vengeance and you must know, as certainly as I know, that we are God’s instruments this day! God is in your bows, God is in your arrows, God is in your weapons, God is in your hearts, and God is in your souls. God will preserve us and God will destroy our enemies!” He paused again as another low murmur sounded among the archers. “With your help!” the king shouted loud now, “with your strength! We will win today!” There was a heartbeat of silence, then the archers cheered. The king waited for the sound to die away. “I have offered peace to our foe! Grant me my rights, I said to them, and we shall have peace, but there is neither peace in their hearts nor mercy in their souls, and so we have come to this place of judgment!” Here, for the first time, the king took his eyes from the throng of kneeling archers and turned to look at the clay furrows that lay between the armies.