Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [101]
Iron braziers had been placed every few yards along the trench. They were heaped with burning sea-coal that gave off pungent fumes.
“Drown them with fire!” Sir John Holland urged the archers, “smoke them out like rats! And when they’re blinded by smoke we fill in the ditch and take the barbican by assault!” He made it sound easy.
The remaining English guns had been loaded with stones coated with pitch. The Dutch gunners waited, their linstocks glowing. Dawn seemed to take forever. The defenders got tired of shooting crossbow bolts and their insults, with their bolts, faded away. Both sides waited. A cockerel crowed in the camp and soon a score of birds was calling. Pageboys carrying spare sheaves of arrows waited in the saps behind the trench where priests were saying mass and hearing confessions. Men took it in turns to kneel and receive the wafers along with God’s blessing. “Your sins are forgiven,” a priest murmured to Hook, who hoped it was true. He had not confessed to Robert Perrill’s murder and, as he took the host, he wondered if that deception would condemn him. He almost blurted out his guilt, but the priest was already gesturing the next man forward so Hook stood and moved away. The wafer stuck to his palate and he said a sudden, silent prayer to Saint Crispinian. Did Harfleur have a guardian saint, he wondered, and was that saint beseeching God to kill the English?
A stir in the trench made Hook turn to see the king edging through the crowded ranks. He wore full battle armor, though he had yet to pull on his helmet. His breast and back plates were covered with a surcoat on which the royal arms were blazoned bright, crossed by the red of Saint George. The king carried a broad-bladed war-ax as well as his sheathed sword. He had no shield, but nor did any other knight or man-at-arms. Their plate armor was protection enough and iron-bound shields were a relic of olden days. The king nodded companionably to the archers. “Take the barbican,” he said as he walked along the trench, “and the city must surely fall. God be with you.” He repeated the phrases as he worked his way along the trench, followed by a squire and two men-at-arms. “I shall go with you,” he said as he neared Hook. “If God wants me to rule France then He will protect us! God be with you! And keep me company, fellows, as we take back what is rightfully ours!”
“String your bows,” Sir John Holland said when the king had gone past. “Won’t be long now!” Hook braced one end of his big bow against his right foot and bent it so that he could loop the string about the upper nock.
“Shoot high with the fire arrows!” Thomas Evelgold growled. “You can’t do a full draw or you’ll scorch your hand! So shoot high! And make sure the pitch is well alight before you loose!”
The gray light seeped brighter. Hook, gazing between two gabions of the battered parapet, could see that the barbican was a wreck. Its great iron-bound timbers that had once formed such a formidable wall had been broken and driven in by gunfire, yet the enemy had patched the gaps with more timbers so that the whole outlying fort now resembled an ugly hill studded with wooden balks. The summit, which had once stood close to forty feet high, was half that now, yet it was still a formidable obstacle. The face was steep, the ditch deep, and there was room at the top for forty or fifty crossbowmen and men-at-arms. Banners hung down the ruined face, displaying saints and coats of arms. Once in a while a helmeted face would peer past a timber as the men on the ragged top watched for the expected assault.
“You start shooting your fire arrows when the guns fire!” Sir John Cornewaille reminded his men. “That’s the signal!
Shoot steadily! If you see a man trying to extinguish the fires, kill the bastard!”
The coals in the nearest