Agincourt - Cornwell Bernard (читать книги онлайн без сокращений .txt) 📗

“The men will do,” Sir John said. He was uncomfortable with the duke whose learning and sanctity lent him an aloof distant air. “They’re cold,” he went on, “they’re sour, they’re wet, they’re hungry, they’re sick, but they’ll fight like mad dogs tomorrow. I wouldn’t want to fight them.”

“You wouldn’t advise,” Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester began, then hesitated and decided to say no more. Sir John knew what question had gone unsaid. Would he advise the king to slip away in the night? No, he would not, but he did not voice that opinion. The king would not run, not now. The king believed God was his supporter, and in the morning God would be required to prove that with a miracle.

“I’ll leave your graces to arm,” Sir John said.

“You have a message for his majesty?” the Duke of York asked.

“Only to wish him God’s blessings,” Sir John said. In truth he had gone to test the king’s temper, though he did not really doubt Henry’s resolve. He said his farewells and went back to the cowshed that was his own quarters. It was a miserable stinking hovel, but Sir John knew he was fortunate to have found it on a night when most men would be exposed to thunder, lightning, rain, and wintry cold.

Rain beat on the fragile roof, leaked through the thatch and puddled on the floor where a paltry fire gave off more smoke than light. Richard Cartwright, Sir John’s armorer, was waiting. He looked more priestlike than any priest, with a grave, dignified face and a quaint, fluttering courtesy. “Now, Sir John?” he asked.

“Now,” Sir John said, and dropped his wet cloak beside the fire.

He had taken off the armor he had worn during the day and Cartwright had dried it, scoured it for rust, and polished it. Now he used cloths he had kept dry in a horsehide bag to wipe dry the leather breeches and jerkin that Sir John wore. The leather was supple deerhide, and the two expensive garments had been made by a tailor in London so that they fitted Sir John like a second skin. Cartwright said nothing as he wiped handfuls of lanolin onto the deerhide.

Sir John was lost in his own thoughts. He had done this so often, stood with his hands outstretched as Cartwright made the leather arms and legs slippery so that the armor above would move easily. He thought back to tournaments and battles, to the excitement that always accompanied the anticipation of those contests, but he sensed no excitement tonight. The rain hammered, the cold wind gusted drops through the cowshed door, and Sir John thought of the thousands of Frenchmen whose armorers were also readying them for battle. So many thousands, he thought. Too many.

“You spoke, Sir John?” Cartwright said.

“Did I?”

“I’m sure I misheard, Sir John. Raise your arms, please.” Cartwright dropped a mail haubergeon over Sir John’s head. The chain mail was close-linked, sleeveless and dropped to Sir John’s groin. The armholes were wide, so that Sir John would not be hampered by its constriction. “Forgive me, Sir John,” Cartwright murmured as he always did when he knelt in front of his master and laced the front and back hems of the haubergeon between Sir John’s legs. Sir John said nothing.

Cartwright also kept silent as he buckled the cuisses to Sir John’s thighs. The front ones slightly overlapped the back ones, and Sir John flexed his legs to make sure the steel plates moved smoothly against each other. He did not ask for any adjustment because Cartwright knew precisely what he was doing. Next came the greaves to protect Sir John’s calves, and the roundels for his knees, and the plate-covered boots that were buckled to the greaves.

Cartwright stood and strapped the skirt into place. The skirt was leather, covered with mail and then plated with overlapping strips of steel to protect Sir John’s groin. Sir John was thinking of his archers trying to sleep in the driving rain. They would be tired, wet and cold in the morning, but he did not doubt they would fight. He heard stones scraping on blades. Arrows, swords, and axes were being sharpened.

The breastplate and backplate came next, the heaviest pieces, made of Bordeaux steel like the rest of the plate, and Cartwright deftly secured the buckles, then strapped on the rerebraces that covered Sir John’s upper arms, the vambraces for his forearms, more roundels for the elbows, and then, with a bow, offered Sir John the plate-covered gauntlets that had their leather palms cut out so Sir John could feel his weapons’ hilts with bare hands. Espaliers covered the vulnerable place where breastplate and backplate joined, then Cartwright strapped the hinged bevor about Sir John’s neck. Some men wore a chain aventail to cover the space between helmet and breastplate, but the finely shaped steel bevor was better than any mail, though Sir John frowned irritably when he tried to turn his head.

“Should I loosen the straps, Sir John?”

“No, no,” Sir John said.

“Your arms, Sir John?” Cartwright hinted gently, and then pulled the surcoat over his master’s head, helped Sir John’s arms into the wide sleeves, then smoothed the linen that was embroidered with the crowned lion and blazoned with the cross of Saint George. Cartwright buckled the sword belt into place and hung the big sword, Darling, which was Sir John’s favorite, from its studs. “You will entrust the scabbard with me, Sir John, in the morning?” Cartwright asked.

“Of course.” Sir John always discarded his scabbard before a fight because a scabbard could tangle a man’s legs. When battle was close Darling would rest in a leather loop, her blade bare.

A leather hood was laced over Sir John’s head, and it was done. The hood would help cushion the helmet which Sir John took, then handed back to Cartwright. “Take the visor off,” he ordered.

“But…”

“Take it off!”

Once, in a tournament in Lyons, Sir John had managed to knock closed the visor of an opposing swordsman and the man’s subsequent half-blindness had made him easy to defeat. Tomorrow, he thought, an Englishman would need every small advantage he could find.

“I believe the enemy have crossbows,” Cartwright said humbly.

“Take it off.”

The visor was removed and Cartwright, with a small bow, handed the helmet back to Sir John. Sir John would put it on later and Cartwright would buckle the helm to the espaliers, but for now Sir John was ready.

It rained. Out in the dark a horse whinnied and thunder sounded. Sir John picked up the strip of purple and white silk that was his wife’s favor and kissed it before stuffing the silk into the narrow space between bevor and breastplate. Some men tied their women’s favors about their necks and Sir John, off balance, had once grabbed such a favor and so pulled an enemy off his horse and then killed him. If, tomorrow, an enemy seized the purple and white it would come free easily and not topple Sir John. Every small advantage. Sir John flexed his arms and found everything satisfactory, and so gave a grim smile. “Thank you, Cartwright,” he said.

Cartwright bowed his head and spoke the words he had always spoken, right from the very first time he had armored his master. “Sir John,” he said, “you are dressed to kill.”

As were thirty thousand Frenchmen.

“What you should do,” Hook told Melisande, “is go away. Go tonight. Take all our coins, whatever you can carry, and go.”

“Go where?” she demanded.

“Find your father,” Hook said. They were talking in the English encampment, which lay in the lower ground south of the long plowed field. The small cottages of the village had been taken by lords, and Hook could hear the sound of hammers on steel as the armorers made the last adjustments to expensive plate. The sound was sharp, drowned by the seethe of the unending rain. To the east of the village the army’s wagons were parked, their spoked wheels lit by the few fires that struggled to survive the downpour. The French army was out of sight from the low ground, but their presence was betrayed by the dull glow of their campfires reflecting from the underside of the dark clouds. Those clouds were suddenly thrown into clear view by a fork of lightning that zigzagged into the eastern woods. A moment later a clap of thunder filled the universe like the sound of some monstrous cannon.