Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [142]
“Goddam rain,” Will of the Dale grumbled. “Sweet Jesus, I hate this goddam rain.”
“How can we win tomorrow?” Scarlet asked.
“You shoot well, Tom, and you hope God loves you,” Hook said, and he wished Saint Crispinian would break his silence, but the saint said nothing.
“If the goddamned French do get in among us tomorrow,” Tom Scarlet said, then faltered.
“What, Tom?” Hook asked.
“Nothing.”
“Say it!”
“I was going to say I’d kill you and you could kill me before they torture us, but that would be difficult, wouldn’t it? I mean you’d be dead and you’d find it really hard to kill me if you were dead.” Scarlet had sounded serious, but then began to laugh and suddenly they were all laughing helplessly, though none really knew why. Dead men laughing, but that, Hook thought, was better than weeping.
They shared the wine, which did nothing to warm them, and slowly, gray as mail, the dawn relieved the dark. Hook went into the eastern woods to empty his bowels and saw a small village just beyond the trees. French men-at-arms had quartered themselves in the hovels and now were mounting horses and riding toward the main encampment. Back on the plateau Hook watched the French forming their battles under their damp standards.
And the English did the same. Nine hundred men-at-arms and five thousand archers came to the field of Agincourt in the dawn, and across from them, across the furrows that had been deep plowed to receive the winter wheat, thirty thousand Frenchmen waited.
To do battle on Saint Crispin’s Day.
PART FOUR
Saint Crispin’s Day
Agincourt
ELEVEN
Dawn was cold and gray. A few spatters of rain blew fitfully across the plowed field, but Hook sensed the night’s downpours had ended. Small patches of mist clung to the furrows and lingered in the dripping trees.
The drummers behind the center of the English line were beating a quick rhythm that was punctuated by the flaring sound of trumpets. The musicians were massed where the king’s banner, the largest in the army, was flanked by the cross of Saint George, by the banner of Edward the Confessor, and by the flag of the Holy Trinity. That quartet of banners, all flown from extra-long poles, was in the middle of the center battle, while the flanking battles, the rearguard and vanguard, were similarly dominated by their leaders’ standards. There were at least fifty other flags flying in the damp air above Henry’s men-at-arms, but those English standards were as nothing to the array of silk and linen that was flaunted by the French. “Count the banners,” Thomas Evelgold had suggested as a way of estimating the French numbers, “and reckon every flag is a lord with twenty men.” Some French lords would have fewer men-at-arms and most would have far more, but Tom Evelgold was certain his method would yield an approximation of the enemy’s numbers, except that even Hook, with his good eyesight, could not distinguish the separate flags. There were simply too many. “There are thousands of the bastards,” Evelgold said unhappily, “and look at all those goddam crossbowmen!” The French archers were on the enemy’s flanks, but some way behind the leading men-at-arms.
“You wait!” an elderly man-at-arms, gray-haired and mounted on a mud-spattered gelding, shouted at the archers. He was just one of the numerous men who had come to offer advice or orders. “You wait,” he called again, “till I throw my baton in the air!” The man held up a short, thick staff that was wrapped in green cloth and surmounted by golden finials. “That’s the signal to shoot arrows! No one is to shoot before that! You watch for my baton!”
“Who’s that?” Hook asked Evelgold.
“Sir Thomas Erpingham.”
“Who’s he?”
“The man who throws the baton,” Evelgold said.
“I shall throw it high!” Sir Thomas shouted, “like this!” He threw the baton vigorously so that it circled high in the rain above him. He lunged to catch it as it fell, but missed. Hook wondered if that was a bad omen.
“Fetch it, Horrocks,” Evelgold said, “and look lively, lad!” Horrocks could not run, the furrows and ridges were