Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [177]
Sir John stood, but did not intervene. He just watched.
“Because Melisande would never forgive you,” Lanferelle said, and he saw the hesitation on Hook’s face and he tensed, ready to bring up his own poleax, but then the steel spike ground into his mouth, ripping his upper gum.
“Go on,” Hook said, “try.”
Sir John still watched.
“Just try,” Hook begged. He kept his eyes on Lanferelle’s face. “You want him, Sir John?”
“He’s yours, Hook.”
“You’re mine,” Hook said to Lanferelle.
“Je me rends,” Lanferelle said, and he released his poleax shaft so the weapon thumped into the mud.
“Take your helmet off,” Hook ordered, drawing back the blood-tipped poleax.
Lanferelle took off his helmet, then his aventail and the leather hood beneath, so releasing his long black hair. He gave Hook his right gauntlet and Hook, triumphant, took his prisoner back to where the other French captives were under guard. The Sire de Lanferelle looked tired suddenly, tired and distraught. “Don’t tie my hands,” he begged.
“Why not?”
“Because I have honor, Nicholas Hook. I have surrendered and I give you my word I will not try to fight again, nor will I try to escape.”
“Then wait here,” Hook said.
“I will wait,” Lanferelle promised.
Hook shouted at a pageboy to bring the Frenchman some water and then went back to the battle that was once again dying. The second French battle had done no better than the first. They had added more bodies to the heaps of the dead, and now the survivors struggled back through the mud, leaving corpses, injured men, and prisoners behind. Hundreds of prisoners. Dukes and counts and lords and men-at-arms, all in surcoats streaked with mud and sodden with blood, all now standing behind the English line and watching, in disbelief, as the remnants of the two French battles limped away.
The third French battle remained. Its flags flew and all along that line men were climbing into saddles and calling on their squires to bring their long lances. “Arrows,” Saint Crispinian spoke in Hook’s head, “you need arrows.”
The day’s work was not over.
Melisande watched.
The English baggage was in the village of Maisoncelles and in the wet pastures around it, and some was halfway up the hill as pages and servants led packhorses toward the protection of the English army beyond the skyline, if indeed there was an English army anymore. Melisande did not know. She had watched men spill over that horizon into the valley where Maisoncelles lay, but those men were few and, by their movements, she guessed they were wounded soldiers, and after a while other men had come, but slowly, not in panicked flight, and she had not understood that they were prisoners being taken toward the village. The lack of panic suggested the English army still held their line on the plateau, but she half expected and half feared to see it come spilling over the edge pursued by the vengeful French.
Instead the French horsemen had come from the west, and now they spurred into the village and Melisande watched as they cut down pages and then dismounted to start pillaging the English baggage.
The horsemen drove away the peasants who had arrived first. A handful of English men-at-arms and wounded archers had been left to guard the encampment, but they only numbered thirty and they had spent their arrows on the serfs and those men now retreated uphill. The women of the army went with them as the horsemen found the English king’s quarters. A priest and two pages had stayed with the king’s treasures, and those three were quickly slaughtered and the plunder began.
Melisande watched. She saw a man parade in a fur-trimmed red robe and with a crown on his head, making his companions laugh. She did not understand what was happening. She could only pray that Nick lived, and so she shut her eyes, crouched low, and prayed.
Hook lived.
The two French battles had retreated, struggling back over the plowland and leaving the space in front of the English thick with bodies in mud-smeared armor. The third French battle was mounted now. It was the smallest