Agincourt

“God be with us,” an archer muttered as Sir Thomas stood in his saddle.

Sir Thomas Erpingham threw the green baton high so that it circled in the damp air. There was silence above the field of Agincourt, a silence in which the green baton flew, its golden finials bright against the dull sky. “Now,” Sir Thomas shouted, “strike!”

The baton fell.

Hook released.

The arrows flew.

The first sound was the bowstrings, the snap of five thousand hemp cords being tightened by stressed yew, and that sound was like the devil’s harpstrings being plucked. Then there was the arrow sound, the sigh of air over feathers, but multiplied, so that it was like the rushing of a wind. That sound diminished as two clouds of arrows, thick as any flock of starlings, climbed into the gray sky. Hook, reaching for another broadhead, marveled at the sight of five thousand arrows in two sky-shadowing groups. The two storms seemed to hover for a heart’s beat at the height of their trajectory, and then the missiles fell.

It was Saint Crispin’s Day in Picardy.

For an instant there was silence.

Then the arrows struck.

It was the sound of steel on steel. A clatter, like Satan’s hailstorm.

And the day’s noise of pain began. It was a scream from a horse that reared with a broadhead deep in its rump. The horse bolted forward, jerking its steel-clad rider in his high saddle, and the motion of the wounded horse served as a signal so that more horses followed, then all the riders spurred and the whole French line gave a great shout as their cavalry began their charge. “Saint Denis! Montjoie!”

“Saint George!” someone shouted in the English line, and the shout was taken up by the small army. “Saint George!” The men-at-arms taunted the French with hunting calls, and the noise grew to a clamor as the trumpets screamed at the sky.

Where Hook’s second broadhead was on its way.

Ghillebert, Seigneur de Lanferelle, was in the front rank of the French army. He was one of over eight thousand dismounted men-at-arms who formed the first of the three French battles. He wore polished plate armor beneath his surcoat of the sun and falcon, though the armor’s leg pieces were now spattered with mud. At his side hung a long battle-sword, across his shoulder was a lead-weighted mace studded with spikes, while in his hands was an ash-shafted lance shortened to seven feet and tipped with a steel spike. His head was enclosed in a leather hood that was laced beneath his chin and beneath which his long hair was coiled. Over the hood he wore a chain-mail aventail that covered his head and shoulders, and above the aventail, completely encasing his skull, was an Italian battle-helm. The helm’s visor was pushed up so he could see the English and see, too, that their army was risibly small.

The French were ebullient. Henry of England had dared to march his pathetic army from Normandy to Picardy, thinking he could shame his enemy by parading his insolent ba

Archers.

Thousands of archers, too many to count, though the French scouts had reported figures as various as four thousand to eight thousand. And those archers, Lanferelle knew, carried the long yew bows and had bags of steel-tipped arrows that, at close range, could slash through the best armor in Christendom. That was why all Lanferelle’s armor was shaped and curved so that the arrows would be deflected, yet even so he knew an unlucky hit could find lodgment. And so Ghillebert, the Lord of Hell, Sire of Lanferelle, did not share his compatriots’ ebullience. He did not doubt for a second that the French men-at-arms could slaughter the English men-at-arms, but to reach that paltry battle-line they would have to endure the arrows.

In the night, as other men drank, the Sire of Lanferelle had gone to an astrologer, a famous man from Paris who was reputed to see the future, and Lanferelle had joined the long line waiting to consult the seer. The man, bearded, grave, and swathed in a fur-edged black cloak, had taken Lanferelle’s gold and then, after much groaning and sighing, had declared he saw nothing but glory in the future. “You will kill, my lord,” the astrologer had said, “you will kill and kill, and gain both glory and riches.” Afterward, standing outside the astrologer’s tent in the seething rain, Lanferelle had felt hollow.

He would kill and kill, of that he was certain, but the ambition was not to slaughter the English, but to capture them, and at the very center of the enemy line, beneath the tallest ba

But between the dream and the reality were the archers.

And Ghillebert, Seigneur de Lanferelle, understood the power of the yew bow.

Which was why, when the English had begun their long, laborious advance across the plow-ruined field between Tramecourt and Agincourt, Lanferelle had called to the constable that it was time to attack. The English, as they struggled forward, had lost their cohesion. Instead of being an army in battle formation they were suddenly a mud-spattered rabble trudging across the treacherous furrows, and Lanferelle had seen the archers in disarray and had called again to Marshal Boucicault and to the constable, d’Albret. “Let the horsemen go now!”

The horsemen were on either French wing, big men on big horses, the stallions with armored faces and thick padding covering their chests, and their job was to charge into the archers on the wings and slaughter them mercilessly, but many of the horsemen had ridden away to exercise their destriers on the grassy meadows beyond the woods to keep the animals warm and the remaining horsemen merely watched the English.

“The decision isn’t mine,” Marshal Boucicault answered Lanferelle.

“Then whose is it?”

“Not mine,” Boucicault said curtly and grimly, and Lanferelle understood that Boucicault shared his fear of the archers’ abilities.

“For the love of Christ!” Lanferelle said when still no order was given for the horsemen to charge. Instead they stood their big destriers and watched as the English struggled ever closer.

“Who leads us? For Christ’s sake, who leads us?” Lanferelle asked loudly. No one had given the French a rousing speech before the battle, though Lanferelle had seen the English king ride and pause along the enemy line and he had guessed Henry was rousing his men to slaughter.

Yet who spoke for France? Neither the constable nor the marshal commanded the vast army. That honor seemed to lie with the Duke of Brabant, or perhaps it was the young Duke of Orleans who had only just arrived on the field and was now watching the English advance and doubtless counting the ransoms to be made. The duke seemed content to let the enemy struggle toward their slaughter and so no order was given to the horsemen on either French wing.

Lanferelle watched, incredulous, as the English were allowed to come within long bowshot. The French had crossbowmen, they even had a handful of men who could shoot the yew bow, and they possessed some small ca