Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [120]
“To help us?” Hook asked. It seemed so long ago that he had worn the ragged red cross of Burgundy and watched as the troops of France had massacred a city.
“No,” Father Christopher said, “to help France.”
“But…” Hook began, then his voice trailed away.
“They have made up their family quarrel,” Father Christopher said, “and so turned against us.”
“And we’re still going to march?” Hook asked.
“The king insists,” Father Christopher said bleakly. “We are a small army at the edge of a great land,” he went on, “but at least you two are joined now for all time. Even death cannot separate you.”
“Thanks be to God,” Melisande said, and made the sign of the cross.
Next day, the eighth day of October, a Tuesday, the feast day of Saint Benedicta, under a clear sky, the army marched.
They went north, following the coastline, and Hook felt the army’s spirits rise as they rode away from the smell of shit and death. Men grinned for no apparent reason, friends teased each other cheerfully, and some put spurs to horses and just galloped for the sheer joy of being in open country again.
Sir John Cornewaille commanded the army’s vanguard, and his own men were in the van of the van and so rode at the very front of the column. Sir John’s banner flew between the cross of Saint George and the flag of the Holy Trinity, the three standards guarded by Sir John’s men-at-arms and followed by four mounted drummers who beat incessantly. The archers rode ahead, scouting the path, and watching for an enemy whose first appearance was an ambush, though none of Sir John’s men was involved. The French had waited until the well-armed and vigilant vanguard had gone by, then had sallied from Montivilliers, a walled town close to the road. Crossbowmen shot from the woods and a group of men-at-arms charged the column and there was a flurry of fighting before the attackers, who numbered fewer than fifty men, were beaten off, though not before they had managed to take a half-dozen prisoners and leave two English dead.
That skirmish occurred on the first day, but thereafter the French seemed to fall back into sleep and so the English men-at-arms rode unarmored, their mail and plate carried by the sumpter horses. The riders’ different colored jerkins gave the mounted column a holiday appearance, enhanced by the banners flying at the head of every contingent. The women, pages and, servants rode behind the men-at-arms, leading packhorses loaded with armor, food, and the great bundles of arrows. Sir John’s company had two light carts, one loaded with food and plate armor, the other heaped with arrows. When Hook turned in his saddle he saw a filmy cloud of dust pluming over the low hills and heavy woods. The dust marked the trail of England’s army as it twisted through the small valleys leading toward the River Somme, and to Hook it appeared to be a large army, but in truth it was a defiant band of fewer than ten thousand men, and only looked larger because there were over twenty thousand horses.
On the Sunday they dropped out of the small, tight hills into a more open and flatter countryside. Sir John had suggested that this was the day they should reach the Somme, and had added that the Somme was the only major obstacle on their journey. Cross that river and they would have a mere three days’ marching to Calais. “So there won’t be a battle?” Michael Hook asked his brother. Lord Slayton’s men were also in the vanguard, though Sir Martin and Thomas Perrill stayed well clear of Sir John and his men.
“They say no,” Hook said, “but who knows?”
“The French won’t stop us?”
“They don’t seem to be trying, do they?” Hook said, nodding at the empty country ahead. He and the rest of Sir John’s archers were a half-mile in front of the column, leading the way to the river. “Maybe the French are happy to see us go?” he suggested. “They’re just leaving us be, perhaps?”
“You’ve been to Calais,” Michael said, impressed that his elder brother had traveled so far and seen so much since last they were together.
“Strange little town, it is,” Hook said, “a vast wall and