Three Great English Victories: A 3-book Collection of Harlequin, 1356 and Azincourt. Bernard CornwellЧитать онлайн книгу.
fortress in the south and bring his army north. The priests blessed the soldiers and promised them that God would recognize the virtue of France’s cause and crush the English mercilessly.
The army could not be fed in Rouen, so at last it crossed the bridge to the north bank of the Seine, leaving a formidable garrison behind to guard the river crossing. Once out of the city and on the long roads stretching through the newly harvested fields, men could dimly comprehend just how vast their army was. It stretched for miles in long columns of armed men, troops of horsemen, battalions of crossbowmen and, trailing behind, the innumerable host of infantry armed with axes, billhooks and spears. This was the might of France, and France’s friends had rallied to the cause. There was a troop of knights from Scotland – big, savage-looking men who nourished a rare hatred of the English. There were mercenaries from Germany and Italy, and there were knights whose names had become famous in Christendom’s tournaments, the elegant killers who had become rich in the sport of war. The French knights spoke not just of defeating Edward of England, but of carrying the war to his kingdom, foreseeing earldoms in Essex and dukedoms in Devonshire. The Bishop of Meaux encouraged his cook to think of a recipe for archers’ fingers, a daube perhaps, seasoned with thyme? He would, the bishop insisted, force the dish down Edward of England’s throat.
Sir Simon rode a seven-year-old destrier now, a fine grey that must have cost the Harlequin close to a hundred pounds. He wore a hauberk of close-ringed mail covered with a surcoat that bore the white cross. His horse had a chanfron of boiled leather and a black trapper, while at Sir Simon’s waist hung a sword made in Poitiers. Henry Colley was almost as well equipped, though in place of a sword he carried a four-foot-long shaft of oak topped with a spiked metal ball.
‘They’re a solemn bunch,’ he complained to Sir Simon about the other men who followed the Harlequin. ‘Like bloody monks.’
‘They can fight,’ Sir Simon said, though he himself was also daunted by the grim dedication of the Harlequin’s men.
The men were all confident, but none took the English as lightly as the rest of the army, which had convinced itself that any battle would be won by numbers alone. The Harlequin quizzed Sir Simon and Henry Colley about the English way of fighting, and his questions were shrewd enough to force both men to drop their bombast and think.
‘They’ll fight on foot,’ Sir Simon concluded. He, like all knights, dreamed of a battle conducted on horseback, of swirling men and couched lances, but the English had learned their business in the wars against the Scots and knew that men on foot defended territory much more effectively than horsemen. ‘Even the knights will fight on foot,’ Sir Simon forecast, ‘and for every man-at-arms they’ll have two or three archers. Those are the bastards to watch.’
The Harlequin nodded. ‘But how do we defeat the archers?’
‘Let them run out of arrows,’ Sir Simon said. ‘They must, eventually. So let every hothead in the army attack, then wait till the arrow bags are empty. Then you’ll get your revenge.’
‘It is more than revenge I want,’ the Harlequin said quietly.
‘What?’
The Harlequin, a handsome man, smiled at Sir Simon, though there was no warmth in the smile. ‘Power,’ he answered very calmly. ‘With power, Sir Simon, comes privilege and with privilege, wealth. What are kings,’ he asked, ‘but men who have risen high? So we shall rise too, and use the defeat of kings as the rungs of our ladder.’
Such talk impressed Sir Simon, though he did not wholly understand it. It seemed to him that the Harlequin was a man of high fancies, but that did not matter because he was also unswervingly dedicated to the defeat of men who were Sir Simon’s enemies. Sir Simon daydreamed of the battle; he saw the English prince’s frightened face, heard his scream and revelled in the thought of taking the insolent whelp prisoner. Jeanette too. The Harlequin could be as secretive and subtle as he wished so long as he led Sir Simon to those simple desires.
And so the French army marched, and still it grew as men came from the outlying parts of the kingdom and from the vassal states beyond France’s frontiers. It marched to seal off the Seine and so trap the English, and its confidence soared when it was learned that the King had made his pilgrimage to the Abbey of St Denis to fetch the oriflamme. It was France’s most sacred symbol, a scarlet banner kept by the Benedictines in the abbey where the Kings of France lay entombed, and every man knew that when the oriflamme was unfurled no quarter would be given. It was said to have been carried by Charlemagne himself, and its silk was red as blood, promising carnage to the enemies of France. The English had come to fight, the oriflamme had been released and the dance of the armies had begun.
Sir Guillaume gave Thomas a linen shirt, a good mail coat, a leather-lined helmet and a sword. ‘It’s old, but good,’ he said of the sword, ‘a cutter rather than a piercer.’ He provided Thomas with a horse, a saddle, a bridle and gave him money. Thomas tried to refuse the last gift, but Sir Guillaume brushed his protest aside. ‘You’ve taken what you wanted from me, I might as well give you the rest.’
‘Taken?’ Thomas was puzzled, even hurt, by the accusation.
‘Eleanor.’
‘I’ve not taken her,’ Thomas protested.
Sir Guillaume’s ravaged face broke into a grin. ‘You will, boy,’ he said, ‘you will.’
They rode next day, going eastwards in the wake of the English army that was now far off. News had come to Caen of burned towns, but no one knew where the enemy had gone and so Sir Guillaume planned to lead his twelve men-at-arms, his squire and his servant to Paris. ‘Someone will know where the King is,’ he said. ‘And you, Thomas, what will you do?’
Thomas had been wondering the same ever since he woke to the light in Sir Guillaume’s house, but now he must make the decision and, to his surprise, there was no conflict at all. ‘I shall go to my king,’ he said.
‘And what of this Sir Simon? What if he hangs you again?’
‘I have the Earl of Northampton’s protection,’ Thomas said, though he reflected it had not worked before.
‘And what of Eleanor?’ Sir Guillaume turned to look at his daughter who, to Thomas’s surprise, had accompanied them. Her father had given her a small palfrey and, unused to riding, she sat on its saddle awkwardly, clutching the high pommel. She did not know why her father had let her come, suggesting to Thomas that perhaps he wanted her to be his cook.
The question made Thomas blush. He knew he could not fight against his own friends, but nor did he want to leave Eleanor. ‘I shall come looking for her,’ he told Sir Guillaume.
‘If you still live,’ the Frenchman growled. ‘Why don’t you fight for me?’
‘Because I’m English.’
Sir Guillaume sneered. ‘You’re Cathar, you’re French, you’re from Languedoc, who knows what you are? You’re a priest’s son, a mongrel bastard of heretic stock.’
‘I’m English,’ Thomas said.
‘You’re a Christian,’ Sir Guillaume retorted, ‘and God has given you and me a duty. How are you to fulfil that duty by joining Edward’s army?’
Thomas did not answer at once. Had God given him a duty? If so he did not want to accept it, for acceptance meant believing in the legends of the Vexilles. Thomas, in the evening after he had met Brother Germain, had talked with Mordecai in Sir Guillaume’s garden, asking the old man if he had ever read the book of Daniel.
Mordecai had sighed, as if he found the question wearisome. ‘Years ago,’ he’d said, ‘many years ago. It is part of the Ketuvim, the writings that all Jewish youths must read. Why?’
‘He’s a prophet, yes? He tells the future.’
‘Dear me,’ Mordecai had said, sitting on the bench and dragging his thin fingers through his forked beard. ‘You Christians,’ he had said, ‘insist that prophets tell the future, but that wasn’t