Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [119]
“Our Harry won’t die,” Hook said fiercely.
“He very well might if the French catch us,” the priest said tartly, “but even our Henry has listened to advice. He was told to go home, he wanted to march to Paris, but he’s settled for Calais instead. And with God’s help, Hook, we should reach Calais long before the French can reach us.”
“You make it sound as if we’re running away.”
“Not quite,” the priest said, “but almost. Think of your lovely Melisande.”
Hook frowned, puzzled. “Melisande?”
“The French are gathered at her bellybutton, Hook, and we are perched on her right nipple. What we plan to do is run to her left nipple and hope to God the French don’t make it to her cleavage before us.”
“And if they do?”
“Then the cleavage will become the valley of the shadow of death,” Father Christopher said, “so pray that we march fast and that the French go on sleeping.”
“You can’t be fussy!” Sir John had told his archers in the taproom. “We can’t pack arrows in barrels, we don’t have the carts to carry barrels! And you can’t use discs! So bundle them, bundle them tight!”
Bundled arrows suffered from crushed fledgings, and crushed fledgings made arrows inaccurate, but there was no choice but to bind the arrows in tight sheaves that could be hung from a saddle or across a packhorse’s back. It took two days to tie the sheaves, for the king was demanding that every available arrow be carried on the journey and that meant carrying hundreds of thousands of arrows. As many as possible were heaped on the light farm carts that would accompany the army, but there were not enough such vehicles, so even men-at-arms were ordered to tie the bundles behind their saddles. There were just five thousand archers marching to Calais and in one minute those men were capable of shooting sixty or seventy thousand arrows, and no battle was ever won in a minute. “If we take every arrow we’ve got, there still won’t be enough,” Thomas Evelgold grumbled, “and then we’ll be throwing rocks at the bastards.”
A garrison was left at Harfleur. It was a strong force of over three hundred men-at-arms and almost a thousand archers, though it was short of horses because the king demanded that the garrison give up every beast except the knights’ war-trained destriers. The horses were needed to carry arrows. The new defenders of Harfleur were left perilously short of arrows themselves, but new ones were expected to arrive any day from England where foresters cut ash shafts, blacksmiths forged bodkins and broadheads, and fledgers bound on the goose feathers.
“We will march swiftly!” a priest with a booming voice shouted. It was the day before the army marched and the priest was visiting every street in Harfleur with a parchment on which the king’s orders had been written. The priest’s job was to make certain every man understood the king’s commands. “There will be no straggling! Above all, the property of the church is sacred! Any man who plunders church property will be hanged! God is with us, and we march to show that by His grace we are the masters of France!”
“You heard him!” Sir John shouted as the priest walked on. “Keep your thieving hands off church property! Don’t rape nuns! God doesn’t like it, and nor do I!”
That night, in the church of Saint Martin, Father Christopher made Hook and Melisande man and wife. Melisande cried and Hook, as he knelt and gazed at the candles guttering on the altar, wished Saint Crispinian would speak to him, but the saint said nothing. He wished he had thought to summon his brother to the church, but there had been no opportunity. Father Christopher had simply insisted that it was time Hook made Melisande his wife and so had taken them to the broken-spired church. “God be with you,” the priest said when the brief ceremony was done.
“He has been,” Melisande said.
“Then pray that He stays with you, because we need God’s help now.” The priest turned and bowed to the altar. “By God we need it,” he added ominously, “the Burgundians have marched.”