His sword was like a living thing. He stepped out, cut, and an English archer folded over his spilling guts. He blocked a second cut from another man, stepped in under it and rammed his pommel into the man’s unguarded face. Then he stepped through him, rotating his sword so that he cut the man’s throat and thrust from low into the guts of the third — so hard that he batted the man’s buckler aside.
That’s why archers don’t fight knights.
I followed Sir Thomas, then, and he ran to the Prince’s banner in the centre. As I ran up, utterly winded, my left leg afire with pain and exhaustion, the Prince was pointing off to the right with a gauntleted hand, and he was grinning. At his hip, mounted, was the Captal de Buch — a young man, but another famous fighter, and a Gascon. Even as I stopped and tried not to heave my guts out in front of the flower of English chivalry, the Captal slammed his visor down and raised his sword. There was a cheer. He had about fifty men-at-arms and another hundred mounted archers — the kind of archers who wear leg armour and ride heavy horses. They rode off to the right in a cloud of late summer dust and a rumble of hooves.
The English line gave another few feet.
I straightened up, and there was the Prince, smiling at Sir Edward and John Hawkwood and another Gascon, Seguin de Badefol, who was later the captain paramount of all the mercenary companies in France, but that day was just another penniless Gascon adventurer — he had a dozen men-at-arms with him, in bad armour. I fit right in with them.
The Prince looked us over. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘with the grace of God and your aid, I will now win this battle.’
We all bowed. It’s odd to tell that in the midst of a stricken field we bowed, but he was the very Prince of chivalry, that day. We bowed like dirty, dusty courtiers, and then we formed a tight array, and followed the Prince into the very centre of the English line.
Thirty men-at-arms. In a battle of thousands and tens of thousands, it shouldn’t have been enough.
We didn’t crash into the French. In fact, I found myself behind a knot of men, too far from the melee to fight, but close enough to feel the desperation. I didn’t know what to do. A veteran would have known to wait his moment and then push in, relieving a tired man, but I’d never been in a close press before.
But luck stayed with me. I was behind an English knight — Sir John Blaunkminster — he thanked me later, and we were friends, so I know his name. At any rate, he took a blow to the side of his helmet from a poleaxe and stumbled back. His stumble took him past me, and I caught the French knight’s poleaxe on my new sword — Good Christ he was strong — and I was fighting.
I was fighting just to stay alive and not give ground, but the French were desperate, ruthless and very good, and before I’d breathed a hundred times, I had two dagger wounds — it was that close, and many of the French were letting go their shortened spears and poleaxes and using heavy rondel daggers. And wrestling.
I lost my sword. I don’t even remember being disarmed. Perhaps my hands couldn’t hold it any more. At any rate, I took a hard blow to the head, which rocked me. I chose to stumble forward, not back, and got my opponent around the waist. He pounded the back of my head with his sword pommel, and I bore him back into the crush and down hill, then suddenly he tripped and went down. He was slippery with blood — his limbs were armoured and mine were not, so any blow he threw hurt me. Armour is a weapon.
But I was on top.
I tried to open his visor, but his armoured hands were as fast as mine.
I remembered my dagger and went for it. By this time I was straddling his chest like a child on his father, slamming my armoured left fist into his visor over and over. Because if I let him have a second, I was done for.
My right hand found my dagger.
My fist closed.
I drew it and slammed it into his visor.
The third downward thrust did the trick, but I’ll wager I stabbed him ten more times.
That’s a fight I’ll take to my grave.
The problem with a melee is that in the moment after you kill an opponent, you sag, and you are very vulnerable in your moment of triumph. I sagged.
An armoured foot caught me in the shoulder and kicked me off my victim. I fell on my back. I’ve no idea who kicked me, but it hurt, and I was slow getting up, and when I did, men were cheering all around me.
The French were giving way.
There were archers all around the rear of their division, and we were pushing them back down the hill. I saw Sir Edward in the press, and I saw the French backing down the hill, closing in around their King. Men-at-arms near me simply sank to their knees, or sat like chastened dogs.
But Sir Edward was pressing down the hill with the Prince. The Prince was shouting orders, his faceplate up, and even as he shouted, Sir James Audley began to gather volunteers from the victors — men with horses nearby.
My horse was not good, and he was far away behind the hill, so I followed Sir Edward down the hill. He was hunting a good ransom.
We had won. Men were still fighting, but the French were starting to fall apart. Their first retreat had been disciplined, but now the Earl of Oxford’s archers were shooting a few hoarded shafts into their backs, and then throwing down their bows, picking up their bucklers and charging into the rear of the French line. The French flinched away like a wounded animal.
It must have occurred to every man on that battlefield at the same time that we could. .
. . take the King of France.
What do you think the King of France is worth as a ransom?
Friends, in the moment of victory — may you all live to know it — everything falls sway: fatigue, wounds, everything. You are a fresh man. While your enemies are suddenly full of self-doubt and fear. This is when men die.
Sir Thomas headed for the lilies and the Oriflamme. I was twenty paces behind him. All around us, men were still fighting — I saw a French squire stagger, trip on his own intestines, fall, rise and try to stagger on. I saw a knight with a dagger wedged under his armpit still fighting, and another with three English archers on him, holding him down and trying to finish him while he fought back with fists and feet. But I ran past all these, because Sir Edward was my knight.
And he was going where I’d have gone anyway.
Some of the Frenchmen were falling to their knees and asking for quarter. Others were suddenly killing Englishmen — running a few steps and then turning to swing their heavy swords.
Sir Thomas was just ten strides ahead.
We were under the Lilies of France. I could just see the King, with twenty men-at-arms around him. We were perhaps five paces from the Oriflamme. Ah, gentlemen, what a fine company you might have formed from the killers who were circling the King of France like sharks around a dying porpoise? There was the Bourc Camus, the evilest knight I ever knew, but a deadly killer; there was John Hawkwood, and Sir John Blaunkminster and Dennis de Moirbeke and Bernard de Troyes; there was John Norbury and Seguin de Badefol. I’ve heard about 600 men claim they were in that fight, and half of them claim to have taken the King. They’re lying.
I was there.
There, too, were all the squires from Oxford’s division — Richard Beauchamps and Diccon Ufford and the rest. They’d come the short way, into the rear of the French. But they’d missed the honour we gained following the Prince at the top of the hill, when the day was lost and won.
Still, there we all were around the King and his son and perhaps thirty desperate French knights.