I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince Read online

  “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.”

  THE PRINCE’S SERVICE

  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 oth
er 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.

  “They will not be here till at least midday, highness,” said the Earl of Warwick in a calm voice. Warwick was twenty years the prince’s senior. Accounted one of the best captains in the English army, he had been the king’s Marshall for the past three years. It was on account of this experience that he had been assigned to the prince’s division. The prince’s pennant with the Plantagenet lion was the largest banner over our company, but Warwick’s red pennant with the yellow bar held second place beneath it.

  “Since we’ve time on our hands,” said the prince, “let the men sit and serve out something to break their fast. It benefits us nothing to fight on empty stomachs.”

  “The storm will break on us sooner than Philip does,” said Chandos, looking up at the ominous clouds gathering in the north. “We shall all be a good deal wetter before the afternoon is out.”

  “Highness,” said Warwick deferentially, also looking upward at the sky, “when you give the orders to serve out rations, let the archers also look to their bowstrings. A wet bowstring sends a weak arrow.”

  Shriven, supped, and posted at the ready, the English army waited on the crest of the hill for all of the morning and into the afternoon. The sky sent down fitful showers of summer rain while the lightning and thunder fought their own battle over the territory of the sun. The noise was terrible and a few horses were frightened. “The heavens themselves portend our conflict!” remarked Audley with irony.

  When the rain abated, the sun returned in glory, brighter for having been obscured a while. Our army faced east, and the light poured in from behind us; it illuminated the field of battle and shone full in the faces of the advancing foe. Philip and his army of sixty thousand men had arrived at last to do battle on the plains of Ponthieu. From half a mile away, I could pick out their great red-orange standard fixed on a lance and flying overhead. It was the Oriflamme, the battle flag of the French kings. Philip had unearthed it from the vaults of Saint Denis and brought it to Crecy, hoping that its golden stars would shine brightly on the house of Valois and that its tongues of fire would speak victory for the French. I wondered who carried the Oriflamme that day, for only the pick of French chivalry were allowed to touch that hallowed banner.

  *****

  No sooner had we sighted their troops than the battle began. The French did not advance in any regular order. From the hill opposite, it was difficult to tell whether they had any leadership at all. Our men, on the contrary, were still arranged in tight formation. At one word from the prince, we arose from our seats on the ground, gripped our weapons, and girded up our loins.

  “They are disorganized!” said I, and my anxiety at being so grossly outnumbered began to abate a little.

  “So is an avalanche,” replied Chandos soberly, “but it can still crush whomever it falls upon.”

  A large company of crossbowmen broke off from the rest of the French army and headed for our ridge at a run. “Here come the Genoese,” said Chandos. “The French were always wont to hire their bowmen.”

  “Best to hire an Italian,” boomed Audley, “because a Frenchman always aims crookedly.”

  “With arrows as well as with words,” said Warwick with a laugh.

  “Good God, these fellows are excitable!” said Chandos, as we watched the Genoese come forward. They ran across the field in short spurts, using most of their energy to send up a great hooting and howling.

  “If bravery was located in the lungs, why then these Italians are the bravest men alive,” said the prince.

  Again they ran forward and again they stopped to taunt us with their cries. For our part, no man said a word, but each stood silent with hand on sword or arrow on string. They came on a third time, and this time they let loose a volley of arrows as well as a volley of shouts. I saw one or two of our men flinch, but the bulk of the barrage fell short. Not a man fired in response; stoic silence continued to reign across our lines.

  “Their bowstrings are wet from the thunder shower,” declared Chandos assessing the cause behind the ineffectual volley. The Genoese had halted now in the field, winding their crossbows for further fusillades. The prince looked questioningly at Warwick, and the earl nodded gravely.

  “Let the archers stand forward,” ordered the prince, and his voice assumed an unusual roughness. “And on my mark, let them fire in unison.”

  Signals circulated throughout the line, and the company commanders barked out his highness’s orders. The archers fired directly on cue, using the full strength of their longbows to put their arrows in flight. I heard men say later that the sky looked like it was filled with snow. The shafts flew so thick that they snuffed out the sun like a candle. The Genoese wore armor on head and breast, but it was as much use to them as a satin doublet. Our arrowheads pierced through the plate like a tailor’s needle through a lady’s gown.

  The English silence was broken now, not only by the cheers of our archers but also by the thunder of our new engines. The king had brought several cannon from England;we had carted them across Normandy all the way to this battlefield. The engines themselves were metal instead of wood, and when lit on fire they shot great iron balls and sent out a deafening rumble.

  The arrows and gunstones did their work. A wail went up from the wounded Genoese, and they tried to exit the field of battle in even more disarray than they had entered it. The French king, however, would not let his mercenaries earn their pay so easily. French horsemen leaped forward impeding the Genoese in their flight and urging them to remember their duty. But soon it became
apparent that the crossbowmen had lost all heart; they would not return to the ridge no matter how much urging they received. With swords turned into scythes, the French horsemen began to cut them down. The Genoese, instead of being an asset, were now an obstacle that must be removed.

  “Send me a volley into their horse,” commanded the prince. The English archers complied. The riot beneath the ridge grew louder as the neighs of stricken steeds combined with the groans of dying men. Philip sent more men into the fray, attempting to overcome the accuracy of our archers with the sheer magnitude of his host. Through unflagging perseverance, several companies of their mounted knights crossed the sea of confusion to reach our lines. Our archers broke ranks immediately and retired to the flank; their arrows were no match for armed riders in such close proximity. Our men-at-arms braced themselves for the onslaught. The hidden pits slowed the French horses down a little, but it was still a thunderous clash when their host met ours in hand to hand combat.

  “Montjoy and Saint Denis!” they cried.

  “England and Saint George!” was our response. It was well that our archers had felled so many of their knights; we had more than enough to do with the ones who reached us. I laid about me right and left with my sword, fighting frantically to keep the Frenchmen off and to stay near my master’s side. Chandos fought more coolly, with his experienced eye trained on the prince all the while.