Agincourt - Cornwell Bernard (читать книги онлайн без сокращений .txt) 📗
And the French watched them. Just watched. “If the bastards had any sense they’d attack us now,” Evelgold said.
“Maybe they will,” Hook said. He watched the distant enemy. Some horsemen who had been exercising their destriers were walking them back toward the flanks of the army, but there appeared to be no urgency in their actions. The trumpets did not change their tune. The French seemed content to let the English march the length of the plowland, and Hook felt his mind skittering like a hare in the spring grass. Had it really been the king who came to the archers in the night? He had forgotten to whip the center of one of his spare bowstrings where the cord engaged an arrow’s nock. Would the king really pray for Michael? Would death be quick? Piers Candeler suddenly loosed a string of oaths and kicked off both boots to negotiate the plow barefoot. Hook remembered the archer he had hanged in London and wondered if that man had felt just this same fear when he watched the Scottish army come to fight on Homildon’s green hill, and then he thought of all the other Englishmen who had carried a war bow for their king. They had fought the Scots, the Welsh, each other, and always, always, they had fought the French, and still these French did not move. Their immobility was scaring Hook. They seemed content to wait, knowing that the small English army must throw itself on their blades.
Hook’s left foot was trapped in the soil’s suction so he did what other archers were doing, let the boot go. He pulled off the other boot and went barefoot, finding it easier. “If they move,” Evelgold shouted in warning, “we stop, string bows, and plant stakes.”
Yet the French did not move. Hook could see still more men joining their army, most coming from the east. The mounted men-at-arms on either flank were watching the English, but not spurring the big warhorses, which had armored faces and padded cloths over their chests and rumps. The riders’ long lances were held upright. Some of the steel-tipped, ash-shafted lances had pennons attached. The horsemen had their helmets’ visors open and Hook could see steel-framed faces. He was cold even though he was sweating. He wore a padded haubergeon over his leather-lined mail coat, and that armor might stop a sword swing, but it would easily be pierced by a lance. He tried to imagine dodging a spear’s thrust in this thick mud and knew it would be impossible.
“Slow down!” a voice ordered. The archers were getting too far ahead of the English men-at-arms who, encumbered by their armor, were making hard work of the waterlogged plowland. Yet, step by step, they advanced steadily, and the woods on either side drew closer so that the English line now filled the space between the trees. The bright group of heralds, French, English, and Burgundian, were walking their horses closer to the French, holding a position halfway between the two armies.
“Christ on His goddam cross,” Evelgold grumbled, “but how close does he want us?”
Then a voice bellowed at the archers to replant their stakes. The enemy was close now, only a little more than two hundred paces away, and that was no farther than the most distant marks at an archery contest, and Hook remembered those summer days with jugglers and dancing bears and free ale and the crowds cheering as the archers drew and loosed. “Stakes!” a man shouted, “plant them firm!”
Hook’s stake slid easily enough into the soft ground. He glanced at the enemy, saw that they were still not moving, and so unslung his poleax and gave the stake’s sharpened tip three hard blows that blunted the wood even as it drove the stake deeper into the ground. He used his knife to shave away the crushed wood and thus sharpen the replanted stake, and then, at last, he uncased the bow from its horsehide sheath. All around him archers were fixing stakes or stringing bows. Hook braced his bow against the stake’s lower end and bent the yew to slip the cord’s noose over the upper nock. He took both arrow bags from his shoulder. He pulled the arrows free and pushed them point down into the soil, bodkins to the left and the half-dozen broadheads to the right. He kissed the bow’s belly, where the dark wood met the light. Dear God, he prayed, and then he prayed to Saint Crispinian, and his heart felt like a trapped bird and his mouth was dry and his right leg shivered, and still the French were motionless and Saint Crispinian made no answer to Hook’s prayer.
The archers were spread out. Their stakes did not make a solid line facing the French, but instead were sunk in scattered lines, filling a space as wide and deep as the marketplace where Henry had burned and hanged the Lollards. There were a couple of paces between stakes, space enough for a man to move, but too tight for any horse to maneuver freely. The archers’ crude ranks stretched back so that the men in the rear could not see the enemy because of the archers in front of them, but that did not matter yet because at two hundred paces they would need to shoot high in the air if their arrows were to reach the French. Hook was in the foremost rank and he turned to see Thomas Perrill hammering in his stake some paces behind and to his right. There was no sign of Sir Martin and Hook wondered if the priest had gone back to the camp. That thought made him shiver for Melisande’s safety, but there was no time to worry about that because Tom Evelgold was shouting at his men to face front.
Hook thought the enemy was at last advancing, but the French were not stirring. Their center was a long thick line of dismounted men-at-arms in bright surcoats and polished armor, while their flanks were two masses of horsemen armed with lances. The flags were silken-bright against the gray sky and, in the very center of the French line, where the banners were thickest, the oriflamme was a red streak of wind-driven ripples telling the English that the enemy would show them no mercy.
Hook tried to find the Sire de Lanferelle in the enemy ranks, but could not see him. Instead he saw the weapons. He saw swords, lances, poleaxes, falcon-beaks, mauls, battleaxes, and maces. Some of the maces had spiked heads. He laid a broadhead across the bow’s thick-bellied stave and suddenly wanted to empty his bowels again. He closed his eyes for an instant and said another fervent prayer to Saint Crispinian, then planted his bare feet in the slimy earth. He braced himself.
“Sweet Jesus Christ,” Thomas Scarlet said.
“Oh God, oh God,” Will of the Dale muttered.
Sir Thomas Erpingham, gray-haired and bareheaded, had mounted his small horse and ridden a few paces ahead of the English line. The horse picked its feet high, unhappy with the sticky soil. Behind Sir Thomas the English men-at-arms waited. The nine hundred were arrayed four deep, with the king, resplendent in shining armor and with a jeweled crown of gold ringing his battle-helm, standing in their center. Sir Thomas, in a green surcoat blazoned with the red cross of Saint George, turned the horse so that his back was toward the French. He waited a few heartbeats.
“Be with me now,” Hook prayed aloud to Saint Crispinian.
He wished the saint would talk to him, but Crispinian was still silent.
“Draw!” Thomas Evelgold ordered in a low voice.
Hook lifted the bow. He drew the hemp-string all the way to his ear and felt the savage power in the bent wood. He aimed at a horse directly ahead of him, but knew it would be luck if the arrow struck where he aimed. If the French had been fifty paces closer he would have picked his targets and been sure of hitting each one, but at extreme bowshot he would be lucky to land the arrow within four or five feet of his target. He held the string back and his right arm quivered.
Five thousand archers had drawn their bows. Five thousand arrows were held on five thousand strings.
A flock of starlings flew up beyond the Tramecourt woods, their wingbeats sudden and loud. They resembled a swirl of dark smoke above the trees and then, as suddenly as they had appeared, they went. All along the French line the visors were being dropped. Hook had seen faces, but now could see only faceless steel.
