So the battle must start again.
“They’ll all be dying up there,” Sir Martin said, “dying in their scores! You’re probably a widow by now.” He grinned with yellow teeth. “I heard you got married. Why, girl, why? Marriage is for the respectable folk, not for common pottage-eaters like Hook, but it doesn’t matter now. You’re a widow, girl! And oh my, but you are a beautiful widow! Now stay still, girl! Stay still! ‘The master of every woman is the man!’ That’s what the holy scripture, the blessed word of the Lord says, so you’re to obey me!” He frowned suddenly. “What’s that mucky stuff on your forehead?”
“A blessing,” Melisande said. She had at last found a bolt and was fumbling to fit it in the crossbow’s groove, but the crossbow was inside the sack and it was hard to feel its mechanism, let alone be certain the bolt was properly in place. Sir Martin was kneeling between her legs and leaning over her, propped on his left hand and using his right to grope between her thighs. A small stream of spittle swayed from his mouth.
“I don’t like it,” Sir Martin said and took his right hand away from her groin to rub at the charcoal lettering. “Don’t like your blessing. You should look pretty for me! You’re not staying still, girl! You want me to hit you?”
“I am still,” Melisande said, though in truth she was shifting desperately, heaving up as she tried to dislodge the awful weight that pressed on her. Sir Martin abandoned his attempt to clean her forehead and put his hand back between her legs. Melisande screamed at his touch and the sound made the priest grin.
“The woman is the glory of the man,” he said, “which is the holy word of Almighty God. So let’s make a baby, shall we?”
She thought the bolt was in the groove, she was not sure, but nor could she wait to be sure, and so she wrenched the crossbow around, dragging the whole sack with it as Sir Martin raised himself, ready to plunge down. “Ave Maria,” he said, “ave Maria,” and Melisande thrust the sack into the space between her belly and his, then pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
The crossbow had been lying untended and fully cocked in her sack and the trigger mechanism must have rusted. She screamed. Sir Martin’s spittle fell and slapped across her face and she jerked her finger again and this time the pawl gave way to release the cord, the steel-shanked span made its vicious sound and the short, thick, iron bolt ripped through the sacking.
Sir Martin seemed to be lifted off her. He stared at her, wide-eyed, his mouth shaped into a horrified circle.
Then he bellowed like a boar being gelded. Blood spurted from his groin to pour warm and sudden on Melisande’s thighs. The leather fledging of the bolt protruded from his bladder while the rusted point was protruding between his legs, and Melisande twisted away, scrambling desperately, and Sir Martin’s clawing hands caught hold of her torn dress and held on. He was screaming now, clutching the linen as though it could save him, and Melisande tore herself away from him, abandoning the dress, and he curled up on the wet ground, whimpering and gasping, thrusting the torn linen into his ravaged groin.
“You’ll die,” Melisande said. “You will bleed to death.” She stooped beside him and his bloodshot eyes looked up at her desperately. “And I shall laugh as you die,” she added.
Another scream sounded. It came from the village and Melisande saw strangers among the baggage. She saw more people running toward the wagons and other folk coming along the stream’s bank. They were local people, bringing hoes and axes and cleavers, peasants who wanted plunder. A man had spotted her and was heading toward her with the same hungry expression she had seen on Sir Martin’s face.
Melisande was naked.
Then she remembered the jupon.
She took one last look at Sir Martin, who was dying in agony, snatched up her sack and his leather purse of coins, then jumped into the stream.
THIRTEEN
The Sire de Lanferelle spat curses. A man at his feet, his visor dented and sheeted with blood, moaned and gasped. The whole of the man’s lower right leg had been lopped off and the blood pulsed slow and thick onto the corpse beneath him. “A priest,” the man gasped, “for the love of God, a priest.”
“There are no priests,” Lanferelle said angrily. He had thrown away his mace, deciding that a poleax would be a more vicious weapon, and viciousness was what he needed if he were to pull a victory from this apparent disaster. Lanferelle understood well enough what had happened. The French, exhausted by their slog through the mud and half blinded by their closed visors, had been easy victims for the English men-at-arms, but he also understood that those men-at-arms could not stretch their thin line to fill the whole space between the two woods. The ends of the line were manned by archers, and the archers, so far as he could tell, had no arrows. He snapped up his ripped visor, forcing the split metal over the rim of his helmet. “We’re going left,” he said.
None of his men answered him. The first French battle had pulled back a score of paces and the English, as if by agreement, had not followed. Both sides were tired. Men leaned on their weapons to draw breath. Between the two armies was a long heap of armor-encased bodies, some dead, some injured, many piled on top of others. The fallen men’s plate, polished in the night to a bright sheen, was jagged with rips, plastered with mud, and streaked with blood. Banners had fallen among the casualties, and a few Englishmen dragged those proud flags free and passed them back to where the French prisoners were being gathered. The oriflamme, which had proclaimed its merciless purpose above the French center, had vanished.
The English were passing skins of water or wine from man to man and Lanferelle suddenly felt parched. “Where’s the wine?” he asked his squire.
“I don’t have any, sire. You didn’t tell me to bring any.”
“Do I have to order you to piss? Jesus, you stink like a midden. Did you shit yourself?”
The squire nodded miserably. He was not the only man whose bowels had loosened in terror, but he quailed under Lanferelle’s scorn. “We’re going left!” Lanferelle called again. He had tried and failed to reach Sir John, so now he planned to lead his men to attack the lightly armored archers instead. He could see the bowmen were carrying maces and poleaxes, but that was better than having them armed with yew bows and ash arrows. He would cut the bastards down and lead Frenchmen through the stakes so they could turn the flank of the English men-at-arms. “This battle isn’t lost,” he told his followers, “it hasn’t even begun! They have no arrows left! So now we can kill the bastards! You hear me? We kill them!”
Trumpets sounded from the northern end of the field. The second French battle, its armor still gleaming and its banners untorn by arrows, was advancing on foot through the morass of plowland churned deep by horses and by the eight thousand Frenchmen of the first attack. That second battle was passing the small group of heralds, English, French, and Burgundian, who watched the battle together from the edge of the Tramecourt woods and the reinforcements, another eight thousand men-at-arms, would reach the killing place in another minute. Lanferelle, not wanting to be caught by the crush of the new arrivals, worked his way toward the flank of the French men-at-arms. He had eleven men with him now, and he reckoned they were enough to cut their way through the archers. And if the twelve led, other men would follow. “Those goddam archers aren’t trained to arms,” he told his men. “They’re tradesmen! They’re nothing but tailors and basket-weavers! They’re just hacking with those axes. So don’t attack them first. Let them hack, then you parry and kill, you understand me?”
Men nodded. They understood, but the field reeked of blood, the oriflamme was gone, and a dozen great lords of France were dead or missing, and Lanferelle knew that victory would only come when men began to believe in victory. So he would give that belief to them. He would fight his way through the English line and he would give France a triumph.