Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell
“Oh, so he is! He believes he is made of glass!” Father Christopher said mockingly. The priest visited the trenches every morning, offering blessings and jests to the archers. “It’s true! He thinks he’s made of glass and will shatter if he falls. He also chews rugs and tells his troubles to the moon.”
“So he won’t be leading any army here, father,” Hook said, smiling.
“But the mad king has sons, Hook, and they’re all blood-thirsty little scum. Any one of them would love to grind our bones to powder.”
“Will they try?”
“God knows, Hook, God alone knows and He isn’t telling me. But I do know there’s an army gathering at Rouen.”
“Is that far?”
“See that road?” The priest pointed to the faint remains of a road that had once led from the Leure Gate, but which was now only a scar in a muddy, missile-battered landscape. “Follow that,” Father Christopher said, “and turn right when it reaches the hill and keep going, and after fifty miles you’ll find a great bridge and a huge city. That’s Rouen, Hook. Fifty miles? An army can march that in three days!”
“So they come,” Hook said, “and we’ll kill them.”
“King Harold said much the same just before Hastings,” Father Christopher said gently.
“Did Harold have archers?” Hook asked.
“Just men-at-arms, I think.”
“Well, then,” Hook said and grinned.
The priest raised his head to peer at Harfleur. “We should have captured the place by now,” he said wistfully. “It’s taking much too long.” He turned because a passing man-at-arms had greeted him cheerfully. Father Christopher returned the greeting and made a sketchy sign of blessing toward the hurrying man. “You know who that was, Hook?”
Hook looked at the retreating figure who wore a bright surcoat of red and white. “No, father, no idea.”
“Geoffrey Chaucer’s son,” the priest said proudly.
“Who?”
“You’ve not heard of Geoffrey Chaucer?” Father Christopher asked. “The poet?”
“Oh, I thought he might be someone useful,” Hook said, then slammed a hand onto the priest’s shoulder and so forced him to crouch. A heartbeat later a crossbow bolt slapped into the muddy back of the trench where Father Christopher had been standing. “That’s Catface,” Hook explained, “he’s useful.”
“Catface?”
“A bastard on the barbican, father. He’s got a face like a polecat. I can see him raise his bow.”
“You can’t shoot him?”
“Twenty paces too far off, father,” Hook said, and peered between two battered wicker baskets filled with disintegrating earth that formed the parapet. He waved, and a figure on the bastion waved back. “I always let him know I’m still living.”
“Polecat,” Father Christopher said musingly. “You know Rob Pole is ill?”
“So’s Fletch. And Dick Godewyne’s wife.”
“Alice? Is she sick too?”
“Horrible, I hear.”
“Rob Pole can’t stop shitting,” the priest said, “and nothing but blood and mucky water comes out.”
“God help us,” Hook said, “Fletch is the same.”
“I’d better start praying,” Father Christopher said earnestly, “we can’t lose men to sickness. Are you feeling well?”
“I am.”
“God be praised for that. And your hand? How’s your hand?”
“It throbs, father,” Hook said, holding up his right hand, which was still bandaged. Melisande had covered the wound with honey, then wrapped it.
“Throbbing is a good sign,” the priest said. He leaned forward and sniffed at the bandage, “and it smells good! Well, it stinks of mud, sweat, and shit, but so do we all. It doesn’t smell rotten, and that’s the important thing. How’s your piss? Is it cloudy? Strong-colored? Feeble?”
“Just normal, father.”
“That’s grand, Hook. We can’t lose you!”
And strange to tell, Hook thought, but he reckoned the priest was telling the truth because he knew he was doing his ventenar’s job well. He had expected to be embarrassed by the small authority, and had feared that some of the older men would deliberately ignore his orders, but if there was any resentment it was muted and his commands were obeyed readily enough. He wore the silver chain with pride.
The weather had turned hot again, baking the mud into a crust that crumbled into fine dust with every footstep. Harfleur crumbled too, yet still the garrison defied the besiegers. The king would come to the archers’ pits four or five times a day and stare at the ramparts. At the beginning of the siege he had chatted with the archers, but now his face was drawn and his lips thin and the archers gave him and his small entourage space. They watched him stare and they could read from his scarred face that he did not think an assault could break through the new inner walls. Any such attack would have to stumble over the ruins of the burned houses, suffer the bolts spitting from the barbican, then cross the great town ditch before climbing the wreckage of the gun-shattered wall and all the time the crossbow bolts would slash in from the flanks, and once across the wall’s ruins the attackers would be faced with the new inner wall that was made from thick baskets of earth, and from balks of timber and stones fetched from the fallen buildings inside the town. “We need another length of wall down,” Hook overheard the king say, “and then we attack instantly into the new breach.”
“Can’t be done, sire,” Sir John Cornewaille said grimly. “This is the only dry approach we’ve got.” The flood waters had receded, but they still ringed much of the town, restricting the English attacks to the two places where the mine shafts were being hacked toward the town.
“Then bring down the barbican,” the king insisted, “and beat the gate beyond into splinters.” He stared, long-nosed and grim-faced, at the stubborn barbican, then suddenly became aware of the anxious archers and men-at-arms watching him. “God didn’t bring us this far to fail!” he shouted confidently. “The town will be ours, fellows, and soon! There will be ale and good food! It will all be ours soon!”
All day the chalk and soil was dragged from the mine shaft while the timbers, cut to a bowstave’s length, were carried inside to support the tunnel. The guns kept up their fire, shrouding the besiegers’ lines with smoke, punching their eardrums with noise, and pounding the already pounded defenses.
“How are your ears?” Sir John greeted Hook on an early September morning.
“My ears, Sir John?”
“Those ugly things on the sides of your head.”
“Nothing wrong with them, Sir John.”
“Then come with me.”
Sir John, his fine armor and surcoat covered in dust, led Hook back through a trench and so to the mine’s entrance beneath the sow. The shaft sloped sharply down for fifteen paces, then the tunnel leveled. It was two paces wide and as high as a bowstave. Rushlights burned from small brackets nailed to the timber supports, but as Hook followed Sir John he noted how the small flames grew feebler the deeper they went. Every few paces Sir John stopped and flattened himself against the tunnel’s side and Hook did the same to let some miner pass with a load of excavated chalk. Dust hung in the air, while the floor was a slurry of water and chalk dust. “All right, boys,” Sir John said when he reached the tunnel’s end, “time to rest. Everyone stay still and silent!”
The far end of the tunnel was lit by horn-shielded lanterns hanging from the last beam to be propped into place. Two miners had been using pick-axes on the tunnel’s face and they gratefully put down their tools and sank to the floor as Dafydd ap Traharn, supervising the work, nodded a greeting to Hook. Sir John crouched near the gray-haired Welshman and motioned for Hook to squat. “Listen,” Sir John hissed.
Hook listened. A miner coughed. “Shh,” Sir John said.
Sometimes, in the long woods that fell from Lord Slayton’s pastures to the river, Hook would stand quite motionless, just listening. He knew every sound of those tree
“My ears ring all the time,” Sir John whispered, “I think because I’ve got beaten on the helmet with blades too much and…” Hook held up an impatient hand, unaware that he was ordering a Knight of the Garter to silence. Sir John obeyed anyway. Hook listened, heard something and then heard it again. “Someone’s digging,” he said.
“Oh, the bastards,” Sir John said quietly. “Are you sure?”
Now that he had identified the sound Hook was surprised no one else could hear the rhythmic thunk of picks striking chalk. The garrison was making a counter-mine, driving their own tunnel toward the besiegers in hope of intercepting the English tunnel before it could be finished. “Maybe two tunnels,” Hook said. The sound was slightly irregular, as if two mismatched rhythms were mixing.
“That’s what I thought,” Dafydd ap Traharn said, “but I wasn’t sure. The ears play tricks underground, they do.”
“Busy little bastards, aren’t they?” Sir John said vengefully. He looked at Dafydd ap Traharn. “How far to go?”
“Twenty paces, Sir John, say two days. Another two to make the chamber. One to fill it with incendiaries.”
“They’re still a long way off,” Sir John said. “Maybe they won’t find this tunnel?”
“They’ll be listening too, Sir John. And the closer they get the clearer they hear us.”
“Putrid stinking prickless rancid bastards,” Sir John said to no one in particular. He nodded at Hook. “I still can’t hear them.”
“They’re there,” Hook said confidently. They spoke in whispers, shrouded by a darkness scarce relieved by the rushlight lanterns flickering in the foul air.
One of the miners spoke in Welsh. Dafydd ap Traharn silenced him with a cautionary hand. “He’s worried what happens if the enemy breaks into the tunnel, Sir John.”
“Make a chamber here,” Sir John said, “big enough for six or seven men. We’ll have archers and men-at-arms standing guard here. Have your own weapons at hand, but for the moment, keep digging. Let’s bring that bastard barbican down.” The mine shaft was aiming for the northernmost tower of the obstinate bastion in hope of tumbling it to fill the flooded ditch. A cavern would be made beneath the tower, a cavern supported by timber balks that would be burned away so that the roof would collapse and, with it, the tower. Sir John slapped the miners on their shoulders. “Well done, boys,” he said, “God is with you.” He beckoned to Hook and the two of them went back toward the sow. “I hope to God He is with us,” Sir John grumbled, then stopped and frowned as he contemplated the tunnel’s entrance. “We’ll have to put some defenses here,” he said.
“In the sow?”
“If the bastards break into our tunnel, Hook, they’ll come swarming out of that hole like rats smelling a free breakfast. We’ll put a wall here and garrison it with archers.”
Hook watched two men carry pit supports into the tunnel. “A wall here will slow the work, Sir John,” he said.
“God damn you, Hook, I know that!” Sir John snapped, then gazed at the tunnel’s mouth. “We need to end this siege! It’s gone on too long. Men are getting sick. We need to be away from this stinking place.”
“Barrels?” Hook suggested.
“Barrels?” Sir John echoed with another snarl.
“Fill three or four barrels with stones and soil,” Hook said patiently, “and if the French come, just roll the barrels into the entrance and stand them upright. Half a dozen archers can take care of any bastard that tries to get past them.”
Sir John stared at the entrance for a few heartbeats, then nodded. “Your mother wasn’t wasting her time when she spread her thighs, Hook. Good man. I want the barrels in place by sundown.”
The barrels were in place by dusk. Hook, waiting to be relieved, went to the trench beside the sow and watched the broken walls that were lit red by the sun sinking beyond the tree-stripped hills. Behind him, in the English camp, a man played a flute plaintively, repeating the same phrase over and over as though trying to get it right. Hook was tired. He wanted to eat and sleep, nothing more, and he paid small attention as a man-at-arms came to stand beside him at the parapet. The man was wearing a close-fitting helmet that half shadowed his face, but otherwise had no armor, just a leather jerkin, but his muddied boots were well made and a golden chain at his neck denoted his high status. “Is that a dead dog?” the man asked, nodding toward a furry corpse lying halfway between the English forward trench and the French barbican. Three ravens were pecking at the dead beast.
“The French shoot them,” Hook said. “The dogs run out of our lines and the crossbowmen shoot them. Then they vanish in the night.”
“The dogs?”
“They’re food for the French,” Hook explained curtly. “Fresh meat.”
“Ah, of course,” the man said. He watched the ravens for a while. “I’ve never eaten dog.”
“Tastes a bit like hare,” Hook said, “but stringier.” Then he glanced at the man and saw the deep-pitted scar beside the long nose. “Sire,” he added hastily, and dropped to one knee.
“Stand up, stand up,” the king said. He stared at the barbican, which now resembled little more than a heap of earth with a wall of battered tree trunks rammed into its crumbling forward slope. “We must take that barbican,” he said absently, speaking to himself. Hook was watching the bastion, looking for the telltale flicker of movement that would warn him of a crossbowman taking aim, but he reckoned the king was safe enough because the French usually went quiet as the sun sank beneath the western horizon, and this evening was no different. The guns and catapults of both sides were silent. “I remember the first day of the siege,” the king said, sounding almost puzzled, “and the church bells were always ringing in the town. I thought they were being defiant, then I realized they were burying their dead. But they don’t ring any more.”
“Too many dead, sire,” Hook said awkwardly, “or maybe there’s no bells left.” There was something about talking to a king that made his thoughts stumble.
“It must be ended quickly,” the king said earnestly, then stepped back from the parapet. “Does the saint still speak to you?” he asked, and Hook was so astonished that the king remembered him that he said nothing, just nodded hastily. “That’s good,” Henry said, “because if God is on our side then nothing can prevail against us. Remember that!” He gave Hook a half smile. “And we will prevail,” Henry added softly, almost as though he spoke to himself. Then he walked down the trench leading back to the sow where a dozen men waited for him.
Hook went to bed.
Next morning, when a gun fired, the earth trembled.
Hook was in the mine, down at the lowest level where Sir John had led him to listen again, and suddenly the earth shuddered and the rushlights flickered dark.
Everyone crouched in the half dark, listening. A miner began coughing wetly and Hook waited until the echo of the cough had died away. Listening. Listening for death, listening.
A second gun fired and the earth seemed to quiver as the tiny flames spluttered again and dust jarred from the roof and gobbets of earth spattered down to splash in the tunnel’s slurry. The rumble of the gun’s noise seemed to last forever, then there was a moaning sound, a creaking, as though the oaken supports were bending under the weight of the earth they carried.
“Hook?” Sir John asked.
There was a scratching noise, so faint that Hook wondered if he imagined it, but then there was a muffled crack followed by silence. After a while the scratching started again, and this time Hook was sure he
Scratching. Hook looked at Dafydd ap Traharn. “How are you digging now, sir?” he asked.
“The way we always do,” the Welshman said, puzzled.
“Show me, sir?”
The Welshman took a pick and went to the tunnel’s face where, instead of swinging the pick to bury its blade in the soft rock, he dragged it down a natural cleft. He dragged it again, deepening the cleft, and then pushed the blade into the hole and tried to lever out a chunk of stone, but the hole was not deep enough and so he scratched the steel point down the groove again. He scratched it. He was working quietly, trying not to alert the French as the tunnel went closer to the ravaged walls, and Hook realized that was the sound he was hearing. Both teams of tunnelers were trying to work silently.
“They’re very close,” Hook said.
“Cymorth ni, O Arglwydd,” a miner muttered and crossed himself.
“How close?” Sir John demanded, ignoring the plea for God’s help.
“Can’t tell, Sir John.”
“God damn the goddam bastards,” Sir John spat.
“They may be above us,” Dafydd ap Traharn suggested, “or below.”
“You’ll know when they’re really close,” Hook said, “you’ll hear the scratching loud.”
“Scratching?” the Welshman asked.
“It’s what I hear, sir.”
“They’ll hack their way through the last few feet,” Dafydd ap Traharn said grimly, “and come on us like demons.”
“We have our own demons waiting for them,” Sir John said. “We’re not abandoning this tunnel! We need it! We’ll fight the bastards underground. It will save us digging them graves, won’t it?”
The war bows were too long to use in the tunnel and so at midday Sir John brought a half-dozen crossbows. “If they break in,” he told Hook, “greet them with these. Then use your poleaxes.”
The scratching was louder, so loud that Dafydd ap Traharn decided there was no longer any purpose in trying to be silent and so his men began to swing their pickaxes, filling the tunnel’s end with noise and a fine choking dust. Every now and then a blade struck flint and a spark would fly fierce and bright across the gloomy shaft. The sparks looked like shooting stars and Hook remembered his grandmother crossing herself whenever she saw such a star, then she would say a prayer and she claimed such prayers, carried by the hurrying stars, were more effective. He closed his eyes when the sparks flew and prayed for Melisande and for Father Christopher and for his brother, Michael. Michael, at least, was in England, far from the Perrill brothers and their mad priest father. “Another day’s work,” Dafydd ap Traharn said, interrupting Hook’s thoughts of home, “and we can start making the cavern. Then we’ll bring down their tower like the walls of Jericho!”