Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [19]
Then, as the sun began to sink toward the monstrous catapult on the river’s bank, a trumpet sounded. It called three times, its notes clear and sharp in the smoke-hazed air, and as the last blast faded, so the crossbowmen ceased shooting. There was a sudden surge of sparks as a thatched roof collapsed into a burning house and the smoke whirled thick along the Compiègne road where Hook saw two horsemen appear.
Neither horseman was in armor. Both men, instead, wore bright colored surcoats, and their only weapons were slender white wands that they held aloft as their horses high-stepped delicately on the rutted road. The Sire de Bournonville must have expected them because the west gate opened and the town’s commander rode out with a single companion to meet the approaching riders.
“Heralds,” Jack Dancy said. Dancy was from Herefordshire and was a few years older than Hook. He had volunteered for service under the Burgundian flag because he had been caught stealing at home. “It was either be hanged there or be killed here,” he had told Hook one night. “What those heralds are doing,” he said now, “is telling us to surrender, and let’s hope we do.”
“And be captured by the French?” Hook asked.
“No, no. He’s a good fellow,” Dancy nodded at de Bournonville, “he’ll make sure we’re safe. If we surrender they’ll let us march away.”
“Where to?”
“Wherever they want us to be,” Dancy said vaguely.
The heralds, who had been followed at a distance by two standard-bearers and a trumpeter, had met de Bournonville not far from the gate. Hook watched as the men bowed to each other from their saddles. This was the first time he had seen heralds, but he knew they were never to be attacked. A herald was an observer, a man who watched for his lord and reported what he saw, and an enemy’s herald was to be treated with respect. Heralds also spoke for their lords, and these men must have spoken for the King of France for one of their flags was the French royal banner, a great square of blue silk on which three gold lilies were emblazoned. The other flag was purple with a white cross and Dancy told him that was the banner of Saint Denis who was France’s patron saint, and Hook wondered whether Denis had more influence in heaven than Crispin and Crispinian. Did they argue their cases before God, he wondered, like two pleaders in a manor court? He touched the wooden cross hanging about his neck.
The men spoke for a brief while, then bowed to each other again before the two royal heralds turned their gray horses and rode away. The Sire de Bournonville watched them for a moment, then wheeled his own horse. He galloped back to the city, curbing beside the dyer’s burning house from where he shouted up at the wall. He spoke French, of which Hook had learned little, but then added some words in English. “We fight! We do not give France this citadel! We fight and we will defeat them!”
That ringing announcement was greeted by silence as Burgundian and English alike let the words die away without echoing their commander’s defiance. Dancy sighed, but said nothing, and then a crossbow bolt whirred overhead to clatter into a nearby street. De Bournonville had waited for a response from his men on the walls, but, receiving none, spurred through the gate and Hook heard the squeal of its huge hinges, the crash as the timbers closed and the heavy thump as the locking bar was dropped into its brackets.
The sun was hazed now, shining red gold and bright through the diffusing smoke beneath which a party of enemy horsemen rode parallel to the city wall. They were men-at-arms, armored and helmeted, and one of them, mounted on a great black horse, carried a strange banner that streamed behind him. The banner bore no badge, it was simply a long pennon of the brightest red cloth,