We ate bread and cheese, our reins in our hands, and then we moved on. Even the Prince dismounted, now, to save the horses. Most of the knights took off their leg harnesses, to save weight and energy. Of course, under their leg harnesses they had only wool hose, so the brambles in the woods took their toll, as did the insects.
The sun began to sink in the sky, and it was clear, even to a fifteen-year-old squire, that we were not catching the French army.
Then we heard the cheers.
Sound carried oddly in the woods. We heard cheers in French, and the unmistakable sound of men fighting — swords and spears. On and on.
We tried to hurry.
Men started to push past the carts in the centre of the column, and there was no holding the Prince — he pushed ahead, and all the knights pushed ahead with him. I was on my turn with the pack animals. I wanted to go, but I didn’t. I stayed and cursed the men from Warwick’s division, who pushed past us and slowed us still further. The sounds of fighting intensified — the cheers grew to roars.
And then ended.
That was the most frustrating thing. There had been a great battle and I’d missed it — I was still in the deep woods with the insects and the baggage carts, just as I had feared all campaign.
That’s it, messieurs. The Battle of Poitiers. I was with the baggage.
Hah!
You know I wasn’t.
And you know we didn’t catch the King of France napping, either.
By the time we came up with the main body, it was almost dark, and our army was badly disorganized. The Gascons had caught the rearguard of the French Army and scattered it, capturing some nobles and killing a few hundred Frenchmen. But our Gascons and the Prince, who saw the last moments of the fight, had to retire in front of a French counter-attack, and they chose to retreat into the woods.
Most of us simply lay down where we were and slept.
We were tired, and the Gascons, who’d fought on horseback, were even more tired. The horses were blown, and so thirsty they called and called. There was no water in the woods, except a stream we’d passed several miles back.
Richard, Diccon and I went back to it. It was the first thing we’d ever done together. It wasn’t an adventure — in fact, we came to the stream long before we expected, because we were moving at horse speed not cart speed. We let our horses drink, and we filled everything we had.
Then we went back to the army. After I took care of my knight and his friends, I gave John Hawkwood a full canteen, and Master Peter another. Then I found John — Monk John. He was staring wide-eyed at the night. I gave him a canteen and he drank it dry and embraced me.
‘Sorry,’ he said suddenly. ‘By Christ, William, I don’t know what came over me that night.’
We were all going to die, so it seemed a good time to restore friendships. He knelt and made his confession to me. By St Peter, he had some sins to confess. I made mine to him, and we were comrades again. I fed him some sausage and went back to the squires.
‘Tomorrow I’ll kill ten Frenchmen,’ said Richard Beauchamp. He went on and on, describing what cuts he’d use. You know the kind of boy he was.
Diccon got to his feet. He was using tow with some fat and a bit of ash to make his helmet gleam. He wiped it with a cloth — he was a careful young man — and set it at his feet.
‘Listen to me,’ he said, and we did. ‘I’m the only one of you who has done this. By tomorrow night, at least three of us will be dead.’ There were only nine of us at the little fire. ‘One of us will die foolishly — falling from his horse, perhaps.’
I thought of the archer I’d seen die when he fell from his horse outside Issoudun.
He looked around. ‘One of us will die trying to be a hero, taking a foolish chance to get a rich ransom.’ He smiled. ‘I almost died that way, and John Hawkwood took a blow meant for me. Of course, he took the man for ransom, too.’
He said it with such flat confidence that we all believed him. This wasn’t male posturing. Diccon had seen the real thing.
‘And the third?’ I asked.
Diccon shrugged. ‘My best friend tried to face Geoffrey de Charny last year in Normandy,’ he said.
I’ve said that de Charny was Lancelot come to earth. He was the best knight in the world. He carried the Oriflamme, the King of France’s sacred banner. We all knew his arms, and we knew that in battle he was like some sort of moving siege engine. Men he touched, died. He had fought the Turks at Smyrna, and rescued the very cloth that touched the face of Christ. Not a word of a lie. He’d fought the heathen in Prussia. He’d fought in Italy, and had made all the great pilgrimages.
He was the best knight in the world.
Richard looked at Diccon in the flickering orange light. ‘What happened?’ he asked.
Diccon shut his eyes for a moment. ‘He died,’ Diccon said.
Richard could be a child — I think I’ve already shown that. Insensitive as only a rich boy can be, he said, ‘How?’
Diccon whirled. ‘He tried to match swords with de Charny. You want to know what happened? I was two arm’s lengths away. Before I could reach him, de Charny cut at him three times — knocked him to earth, put a foot on his chest and rammed his sword point through his mouth.’ Diccon said this in a shocking voice.
I was afraid that Diccon, who I respected a great deal, was about to burst into tears.
Hawkwood appeared out of the darkness. ‘Shouldn’t you boys be in your cloaks?’ he asked. He looked at Diccon. ‘Naught you could have done, Diccon.’
‘He died.’ Diccon was better in control now, but that voice wasn’t far away.
‘He died fighting the best knight in France — perhaps the world.’ Hawkwood looked around. ‘Go to sleep, you lot.’
I took a deep breath. ‘What do we do, if that happens?’ I asked. ‘I had to fight Boucicault. He had mercy on me.’
Hawkwood smiled. ‘So you know that, eh? You know he let you live.’
I nodded and swallowed.
Hawkwood nodded. ‘When one of them is on the loose, you close up with your friends, form a hedgehog of steel and try to keep the monsters at bay until someone comes and gets you.’
‘Someone like you?’ I asked.
Hawkwood shook his head. ‘Oh, no, boy. Not me. Perhaps your Sir Edward in a few years. The Prince. Sir John Chandos. Sir James Audley.’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps even you, Judas.’ He laughed. ‘If you survive tomorrow.’
Morning came. I slept. I can’t say the same for everyone, but I had to be kicked awake, and my master was less than perfectly pleased.
I fetched water again and missed a lot of arguing among the higher orders. By St George, scared men are like a pack of old crows, and they squawked and squawked.
But when the Prince decided, we moved.
We marched south. The Prince intended to offer battle from a carefully scouted position — one we could only reach by, in effect, sneaking round behind the French camp. But the plan showed he was as canny as Lancaster ever was, because with good guides, good scouts and superb luck, we passed through Noailles at the break of day and set out banners on the hilltop just west of the town, clear of the damned woods. In one easy march, we rested on the flank of a river full of fresh water running free over rocks — I mention this because the moment we were in battle order, all the squires and servants were sent in shifts to water the horses and men. Better yet, we’d passed south of the French, and we no longer had them between us and Bordeaux. If we were defeated, or if we chose to slip away, we could simply outmarch them to the south.
We were saved.
And we knew it. It was a march of supreme daring, and we were too tired even to know the risk we were running. The Prince threw the dice, and won. We occupied the ground from Noailles to the River Moisson in the south, and to the woods of Noailles to our north, and the archers on the naked slopes started to dig trenches while the archers on the southern flank cut holes in the hedges through which to loose their shafts. It was like a little fortress. We halted, formed our ranks, went for water, and sat to eat our breakfasts while the bedraggled cardinal returned to beg the Prince for a truce. The Earl had just sent me to the Prince with a small keg of water — the prince’s squires were fine gentlemen who didn’t want to get their nice iron sabatons wet — when Talleyrand rode up.