Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [155]
“See them off!” Evelgold shouted.
The charge had ended at the stakes and the first French attack had ended in failure. The horsemen had been supposed to scatter the archers, but the arrows had done their wicked work and the stakes had stopped the survivors from getting among the bowmen. Some men-at-arms were already riding away, pursued by arrows, while riderless horses, crazed with pain, charged back at their own lines. One man, braver than brave, had dropped his lance to draw his sword and now tried to steer his destrier between the stakes, but the arrows whipped into his horse, which went to its knees, and a bodkin, shot at less than ten paces, drove through the rider’s breastplate, killing him, and he sat there, a head-drooping corpse on a dying horse, and the English archers jeered him.
It was strange, Hook thought, that the fear had gone. Now, instead, an excitement sang in his veins and a thin shrill voice keened in his head. He went back to his stake and plucked up a bodkin. The horsemen were gone, defeated by arrows, but the main French attack still advanced. They came on foot, because armored men on foot were less vulnerable to arrows than horses, and they came beneath bright banners, but their ranks had been churned to chaos by the wounded, riderless horses that had fled in blind panic to charge through the advancing French. Men went down under the heavy hooves, and other men tried to straighten the ragged line that stumbled across the deep furrows toward the English king and his men-at-arms. Hook picked his targets. He drew, the cord flowing back with deceptive ease, and he loosed arrow after arrow. Other archers crowded him, all jostling forward to pour their shafts at the French.
Who still came on. Their ranks had been broken by the panicked horses, and men were falling as arrows found their marks, but still they advanced. All France’s high aristocracy was in the leading battle and they came beneath proud banners. Eight thousand dismounted men-at-arms attacking nine hundred.
Then a French gun fired.
Melisande was praying. It was not a conscious prayer, more a desperate and silent and unending cry for help aimed at a gray sky, which offered her no comfort.
The baggage had been supposed to follow the army up onto the plateau, but most had stayed around the village of Maisoncelles where the king had spent much of the night. The royal baggage wagons were parked there, guarded by ten men-at-arms and twenty archers, all of them reckoned too sick or lame to stand in the main line of battle. Father Christopher had led Melisande there, saying she would be safer than with the few packhorses that had been led up onto the high plowland where the two armies met. The priest had written his mysterious letters on her forehead. IHC Nazar. “It will preserve your life,” he had promised her.
“Write it on your own face,” Melisande had told him.
Father Christopher had smiled. “God has me in the palm of His hand, my dear,” he said, then made the sign of the cross, “and He will preserve you. But you must stay here. You will be safer here.” He had placed her with the other archers’ wives between two empty wagons that had brought arrows to Agincourt, made sure that her horse was nearby and that the mare was saddled, and