I Serve (5 page)

The luxurious spoils of Caen whetted our appetite for more. Many hoped that Paris would be our next conquest, but the king, as we learned later, had set his sights north of that on the city of Rouen. We had been in France well over a fortnight now and had yet received no word of French Philip’s intentions. He had lain very quietly, waiting like a thrush in the hedge till the hounds pass by. But as we neared
l’Ile de France
and nosed about his nest a little, Philip began to rouse himself.

The first sign we received that Philip had bestirred himself was an embassy from the pope. For over fifty years now, the pope has had his seat at Avignon, and for over fifty years, the English have mistrusted whether Peter’s successor still holds the keys. The rock upon which the church was built has sat in Rome for over a millennium, and it cannot be carted over the Alps like a cask of wine or a wheel of cheese. The removal of the papacy to France effected the removal of the pope’s independent judgment. Your French pope sits in the French king’s pocket, and this our king knows well enough. But though he might wish to, the English king cannot disregard the pope entirely; though his spiritual authority is dubious, his temporal authority is indisputable. An English king who disregarded the mandates of the pope would face the wrath of the Holy Roman Emperor as well as the wrath of France.

Edward received the cardinals courteously and just as courteously refused their offers to broker a peace. Their embassage gained nothing for us but the delay of a day; but for Philip of Valois, this delay was a boon from heaven. Guessing our plan of cutting north, Philip set spurs into the sides of his royal army and reached Rouen before us.

When our scouts realized Philip’s position, Edward ordered us to fall back. Our troops numbered just over fifteen thousand and Philip’s at least four times that many. The reports of the French strength began to dishearten our men, and the enthusiasm from the sack of Caen disappeared entirely. But although the men had fears, there was no talk of retreat the way we came. We had burned such a wide swath of land in Normandy that there would be no supplying our army on a return march. Only two pathways lay open to us. We could plunder Paris in Philip’s absence, or we could cross the river Somme and unite with our Flemish allies in Picardy.

At first, His Majesty seemed to have settled on the former stratagem. With Philip patrolling the ramparts of Rouen, our army strode southwest, paving a highway of burned fields into Paris. The French army proved as mobile as our own, however, and we had no sooner reached Poissy, on the outskirts of Paris, than we received word that Philip had returned to his capital.

To hunt a lion in his own lair is a dangerous undertaking for the hunter, and Edward was not unmindful of the perils. Paris could not be taken with Philip there. Choosing discretion as the better part of valor, we hurriedly crossed the Seine and went northward on winged feet. The prospect of uniting with our Flemish friends seemed more and more inviting. But Philip, by now, was accustomed to sniffing at our heels. The Seine was an easy stream for him to leap, and he brought his army northward, dogging our steps for ten days and sending challenge after challenge to bid us turn and fight.

“
Think you we will engage the French?” I asked one night as I oiled Chandos’s cuirass after a long day’s ride.

“
Aye,” said he, “there’s no shaking them. We’ll fight them soon enough, but when we do it will be in a place of our own choosing with the advantage on our side.”

“
We had the advantage of the terrain in Poissy,” said I. “That’s where the first challenge came. Why didn’t His Majesty form battle lines there instead of waiting to wear out our men with these forced marches?”

“
There’s more to having the advantage than terrain, boy,” said Chandos with a knowing grin.

“
What else is there?” I asked.

“
There’s the advantage of knowing you are in the right. That’s the advantage His Majesty seeks, and that’s why we do not turn to give battle. Not until the Somme is crossed. Then we know we have God’s favor—at least that’s what Bradwardine, the king’s chaplain claims.”

“
But why should crossing the Somme matter so much?” demanded I. “This whole land of France is the king’s by right. We shall prove this with our bodies before heaven and all of Christendom, and the just Judge will look on no matter where the battle is waged. Why should Bradwardine split straws as to location?”

“
In truth,” said Chandos, “the whole of France does belong to our sovereign by right of inheritance through his mother. God keep the English from having such sickly sons as the French! Their old king, Philip the Fair, had three sons; and all of them died without begetting so much as a halfwit manchild to wear the crown after them. But their sister Isabella, she was more valiant than them all—albeit with the malice of Satan in her breast! She mingled her blood with the Plantagenets, and bore a son the like of which France has never seen. A second David, a second Alexander, a second Julius Caesar! This son, our King Edward, is the only true grandson to the Fair Philip, while this Philip of Valois who claims to own the throne is nothing more than a third cousin of bastard stock. So aye, the whole of France does belong to our Edward.

“
But there are many in France who would deny this,” continued Chandos. “They say that Isabella’s child cannot inherit, and that Philip of Valois has better claim since it lies through the paternal line. They claim that the crown of France cannot pass through the line of a woman—a brazen falsehood as their own annals will bear warrant. But once we cross the river Somme there can be no contest. That county, the county of Ponthieu, belongs to Edward in more ways than one. It was his grandmother’s possession. It was his mother’s land, and she passed it to him by direct inheritance. Let the lawyers argue away every other county in France, but Ponthieu at least is Edward’s. There we will turn to face our adversary, and there may God defend the right!”

It pleased me to know the reason behind our flight, and I wondered how much of this explanation other squires would get from their masters. “We may reach the Somme tomorrow,” I remarked, as I finished cleaning Chandos’s cuirass. “Think you the prince will follow your advice and make new knights after the battle?”

“
Mayhap,” said Chandos with a sleepy grunt as he removed his tunic. “But winning the battle is more to the point. There’ll be no knighting if the day goes against us. Go to bed now, boy. Sleep sound, fight hard, speak true, and you may yet be a knight if you stay alive.”

AUGUST
,
1346

3

I will pass over our crossing of the Somme in a far shorter time than it took us to pass over. The river which we sought so eagerly almost became our place of battle. Philip’s army caught up with us at the ford; for a time Ponthieu seemed unattainable. Arrows filled the air as thick as gnats before the army and the baggage train could reach the other side. Though unwished for, the skirmish at the ford was a valuable experience for our men. The colossal size of Philip’s army had intimidated us at first, but now that we had tasted the flavor of Philip’s army we found it raw and unseasoned. The archers shot short, the horses ran shy, and the foot soldiers fought little better than the farmhands we had butchered at Caen. Philip’s army may have been superior to ours in size, but it was inferior in all else.

“
No more running,” said Chandos as we entered the undulating hills of Ponthieu. “Now we turn and fight.” As usual, Chandos knew the mind of the king. Edward led the army as far as the forest of Crecy and cried halt on a ridge overlooking the valley. It was a well defended spot. The forest and a little brook protected our right flank. The village below the ridge protected our left. From our vantage point we had both a view of Philip’s approaching army and the ease of downhill momentum if it came to a charge.

Night approached and the king ordered every man to look to his armor and to his soul. The tents around Crecy were unusually wakeful, owing to the imminence of Philip’s arrival. Morning came for most before the sun had risen. Bradwardine, the king’s chaplain, recited a special mass for the king and his nobles and offered them communion. The army also heard mass. Following this there was a round of murmured confession such as I have never heard before. The men dredged up all the sins of past and present from the dark recesses of their hearts to receive absolution before the time of peril. They confessed sins from long ago committed against fathers and mothers at home in England; they confessed sins from a month past of theft and rapine perpetrated in France.

My own list of sins, so it seemed, was far less black than the sins of those around me. I could think of few sins to make confession for—a guinea pilfered from Sir Chandos when my own purse had run low, a deliberate lie to cover up my laziness the night I neglected his horse—but my own lack of sins to confess worried me more than a packload of evil. The men around me had lists an ell long of sins both mortal and venial. Perhaps I was forgetting crimes that ought to be confessed. I poked and prodded my memory fearing to die unshriven. A nagging thought arose in me that perhaps I ought to make confession for each guinea or bauble I had extorted, for each terrified fugitive I had cut down in retreat, for each woman’s scream that I had heard and ignored. But every time the thought of guilt assailed me, I swallowed it back down my throat like a lump of bread. These were the necessary evils of war, and there was no need for me to make confession of such things.

Whether or not he had finished confession, each man repaired to his place when the alarum sounded. “We are assigned to the prince’s body,” said Chandos as I fitted him for battle. He extended his arms to the side so that I could fasten the points of his breastplate. With this secured, I placed the pauldron on his shoulder and secured his mail all the way down to his gauntlets.

I was pleased that we were to be bodyguards for his highness. “What division will the prince be in?” I asked as I unfolded the surcoat which would cover Chandos’s armor. It was blue, bright blue, the color of a cloudless summer sky. And on the breast of the coat was embroidered an image of the Blessed Virgin surrounded by rays of silver.

“
His Highness is the commander of the first division,” said Chandos. “He holds the right flank beside the forest and the brook.”

“
Commander?” asked I in some surprise, for though he was of royal blood, he was still a youth of my own age. He had never taken part in a battle of this magnitude. I wondered that the king should charge his heir with such responsibility—and such risk.

“
Commander
in nomine
,” said Chandos with a smile. “He has Warwick and others to assist him. The king has charged Audley and me to guard his body as if it were our own.”

“
And the right flank is best protected,” I reasoned, “by virtue of Crecy forest.”

“
Aye, best protected,” agreed Chandos, “but also closest to the Somme. When Philip crossed the river, he’ll come our way first; we’ll bear the brunt of the attack I’ll wager.”

“
Who leads the other divisions?” I asked.

“
The second belongs to the Earls of Northampton and Arundel,” replied Chandos. “They’re to our left with their withers pressed against the village. And the third belongs to His Majesty. It’s to be held in reserve behind the other two companies.”

“
If we do our duty, we’ll not need the king’s men,” I said spiritedly, trying to boost my own confidence.

When we reached our place on the line, we found that the men had already assumed their positions. The archers, who made up the majority of our company, arranged themselves two or three deep in front of the men-at-arms. There was no shortage of English archers in our expedition to France; King Edward had made sure of that. When he had first laid claim to the crown of France the king sent out edicts to prepare for a future invasion. One edict demanded that all children, whether noble or common, be taught the French language; this ensured that our men-at-arms would be at home in a land with a foreign tongue. Another edict encouraged practice with bow and arrow. The king commissioned shooting games in each shire and awarded prizes to the archer most supremely skilled. Play with the quarterstaff was all but abandoned as the young men bent their backs to string the longbow. Farmers turned foresters, robbing the wild geese of their tail feathers and the wild beasts of their skins. Thanks to Edward’s edicts, the men of England had become masters of the longbow, and the muster of archers at Crecy more than doubled the men-at-arms standing behind them.

As the enemy advanced toward us, the longbowmen would exercise all of their skill in bringing them down. When the enemy advanced too far for comfort’s sake, the line of archers would split in the center and form two columns on either side of our division. From there they could rake the enemy’s flanks while our men-at-arms waited for the French horse to close the distance for hand to hand combat. But it was the French who must close that distance; we would not advance. In front of our line, each man had dug a small pit about as deep and as wide as a man’s forearm. The French horses which survived the breast-piercing onslaught of the archers would have to contend with the foreleg-twisting trap of the pits.

The sun was just beginning to ascend into the heavens when we ascended the ridge and found our place beside the prince. Grey clouds were forming in the north; they threatened to blot out the sun and water the land before the day was through. The men-at-arms had all dismounted as instructed; the prince, one of the few solitary figures on horseback, sat tall above the rest. He wore a suit of armor that I had never seen before, black and sharp like polished obsidian. His visor was up and I saw his eyes searching the field like a falcon wheeling above a rabbit warren. It was the same keen expression his face had born in
l’Abbaye-aux-Hommes
when he searched for the Conqueror’s tomb.