Sir John was fighting Lanferelle, both men so fast with weapons that it was difficult to see thrust, cut or parry, while the other English men-at-arms attacked on either side with such sudden savagery that Lanferelle’s followers instinctively stepped back, intent on defending themselves against the newly arrived men, and as they went back so some tripped on the bodies lying on the ground behind them. They fell and the English came at them, pole-spikes stabbing, axes splitting armor, faces grimacing with the effort of killing, and the sudden slaughter took the spirit from the remaining French who tried to back away and found archers on their flanks. Men began to shout that they yielded. They dragged off gauntlets and shouted their surrenders in desperate panic. “Too late,” Will of the Dale sneered at one man and chopped down with his ax to split an espalier and slice the blade down through shoulder blade and upper ribs. Another Frenchman in a ripped surcoat crawled on hands and knees, blood drooling from his mouth, weeping from sightless eyes, blundering through mud till an archer kicked him down and casually killed him with a knife thrust in the mouth. Young Horrocks was beating a count to death, slamming a poleax again and again into the fallen man’s backplate and screaming insults as the blade tore into steel and spine.
Lanferelle was left, still fighting Sir John, and by some unspoken agreement the other English men-at-arms did not intervene. Neither man spoke. They had their feet planted in the mud and they cut, lunged, and feinted, yet both were so skilled and so quick that neither could find an advantage. They were the tournament champions of Christendom, one French, one English, and they were accustomed to the silken glories of the lists; the admiring women, the bright flags, the courtesy of chivalry, yet now they fought among corpses, amidst the moans and whimpers of the dying, on a field reeking of blood and shit.
The end came by accident. Lanferelle feinted a lunge to Sir John’s left, recovered with astonishing speed, cut, and so forced Sir John to step to his right and his foot landed on the hoof of a dead destrier and the hoof rolled under the weight and Sir John slipped and fell onto one knee and Lanferelle, fast as a snake, whipped the poleax around and struck Sir John’s helmet a ringing blow and Sir John fell full length onto the horse’s bloody belly where he floundered, trying to find his balance and so get to his feet, and Lanferelle raised the poleax for the killing blow.
And thrust.
The French second battle had forced the survivors of the first back to the killing ground where the English waited behind a rampart of dead and dying Frenchmen. So many of the high nobility of France were already dead or bleeding; their bones shattered, their guts torn, their brains spilling from mangled helmets, their eyes gouged and bellies ripped. Men were weeping, some calling for God or for their wives or for their mothers, but neither God nor any woman was there to offer comfort.
The King of England was going forward now. He had pulled one corpse from atop two others to make a passage through the heaped dead and he carried his sword to an enemy who had dared defy God’s choice for France’s throne. His men-at-arms advanced with him, cutting their axes and grinding their maces and chopping their sharp-curved falcon-beaks into a demoralized and mud-wearied enemy. They made new piles of dead, new blood-laced corpses, and more cripples whose cries for help went unanswered. Henry led them, despite the shouts of men who wanted him to protect himself. His helmet was dented and scarred, a fleuret of gold had been severed from the bright crown, but England’s king was replete with a righteous and holy joy because he saw in the enemy’s suffering the proof of divine providence. Underfoot the plowland’s ridges and furrows had been trampled into a flat morass that was the color of blood. Men waded in a slurry of mud, blood, and shit, they struggled and died, and Henry’s soul soared. God was with him and, in that assurance, he found new strength and went on killing.
Lanferelle thrust hard and vicious just as a poleax blade hooked about his left espalier and hauled him back hard and fast. The Frenchman’s blow fell short of Sir John, but Lanferelle, miraculously keeping his footing, turned on his new enemy and then stopped.
The poleax had pulled him away from Sir John and denied him his kill, and now its spike was in his face, its point mashing his lip against his teeth and Lanferelle found himself staring into Hook’s face.
“When you fought him before,” Hook said, “he let you stand up. You wouldn’t do the same for him?”
“This is battle,” Lanferelle said, his voice distorted by the spike’s pressure, “and that was a tournament.”
“Then if this is battle,” Hook asked, “why shouldn’t I kill you?”
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.