“After them!” Sir John Holland shouted, “give them arrows!”
The archers and men-at-arms scrambled from the trench. Now Hook could shoot over the heads of the men in front, aiming at the crossbowmen who suddenly crowded the barbican’s smoke-wreathed parapet. “Arrows,” he bellowed, and a page brought him a fresh bag. He was shooting instinctively now, sending bodkin after bodkin at the defenders who were little more than shadows in the thickening smoke. There were shouts from the ditch’s edge. Men were dying there, but their faggots were filling the deep hole.
“For Harry and Saint George!” Sir John Cornewaille bellowed. “Standard-bearer!”
“I’m here!” a squire, given the task of carrying Sir John’s banner, called back.
“Forward!”
The men-at-arms went with Sir John, shouting as they advanced over the uneven, broken and scorched ground. The archers came behind. The trumpet still sounded. Other men were advancing to the left and right. The bowmen who had filled the ditch had run to either side and were now shooting arrows up at the rampart. Crossbow bolts smacked into men. One of Sir John’s men opened his mouth suddenly, clutched his belly and, without a sound, doubled over and fell. Another man-at-arms, the son of an earl, had blood dripping from his helmet and a bolt sticking from his open visor. He staggered, then fell to his knees. He shook off Hook’s helping hand and, with the bolt still in his shattered face, managed to stand and run forward again.
“Shout louder, you bastards!” Sir John called, and the attackers gave a ragged cry of Saint George. “Louder!”
A gun punched rancid smoke from the town’s walls and its stone slashed diagonally across the rough ground where the attackers advanced. A man-at-arms was struck on the thigh and he spun around, blood splashing high on his jupon, and the gun-stone kept going, disemboweling a page and still it flew, blood drops trailing, to vanish somewhere over the marshes. An archer’s bow snapped at the full draw and he cursed. “Don’t give the bastards time! Kill them!” Sir John Cornewaille bellowed as he jumped down onto the faggots that filled the ditch.
And now the shouting was constant as the first attackers staggered on the uneven faggots that did not entirely fill the moat. Crossbow bolts hissed down, and the defenders added stones and lengths of timber that they hurled from the barbican’s high rampart. Two more guns fired from the town walls, belching smoke, their stones slashing harmlessly behind the attackers. Trumpets were calling in Harfleur and the crossbows were shooting from the walls. So long as the attackers were close to the barbican they were safe from the missiles loosed from the town, but some men were trying to clamber up the bastion’s eroded flanks and there they were in full sight of Harfleur’s defenders.
Hook emptied his arrow bag at the men on the barbican’s summit, then looked around for a page with more arrows, but could see none. “Horrocks,” he shouted at his youngest archer, “go and find arrows!” He saw a wounded archer, not one of his men, sitting a few paces away and he took a handful of arrows from the man’s bag and trapped one between his thumb and the bowstave. The English banners were at the foot of the barbican and most of the men-at-arms were on its lower slopes, trying to climb between the flames that burned fiercely to blind the defenders with smoke. It was like trying to scramble up the face of a crumbling bluff, but a bluff in which fires burned and smoke writhed. The French were bellowing defiance. Their best weapons now were the stones they hurled down the face and Hook saw a man-at-arms tumble back, his helmet half crushed by a boulder. The king was there, or at least his standard was bright against the smoke and Hook wondered if the king had been the man he saw falling with a crushed helmet. What would happen if the king died? But at least he was there, in the fight, and Hook felt a surge of pride that England had a fighting king and not some half-mad monarch who circled his body with straps because he believed he was made of glass.
Sir John’s banner was on the right now, joined there by the three bells on Sir William Porter’s flag. Hook shouted at his men to follow as he ran to the ditch’s edge. He jumped in, landing on the corpse of a man in plate armor. A crossbow bolt had pierced the man’s aventail, spreading blood from his ravaged throat. Someone had already stripped the body of sword and helmet. Hook negotiated the uncertain faggots and hauled himself up the far side where the smoke was thick. He loosed three arrows, then put his last one across the bowstave. The flames were growing stronger as they fed on the barbican’s broken timbers and those fires, designed to blind the defenders, were now a barrier to the attackers. Arrows hissed overhead, evidence that the pages had found more and brought them to the archers, but Hook was too committed to the attack now to go back and replenish his arrow bag. He ran to his right, dodging bodies, unaware of the crossbow bolts that struck around him. He saw Sir John precariously perched on top of some iron-bound timbers from where he stared upward at the men who taunted the attackers. One of those defenders appeared briefly and hoisted a boulder over his head, ready to hurl it down at Sir John, and Hook paused, drew, released, and his arrow caught the man in his armpit so that he turned slowly and fell back out of sight.
A gust of the east wind swirled the smoke away from the barbican’s right-hand flank and Hook saw an opening there, a cave in the half-collapsed tower that had defended the seaward side. He slung the bow and took the poleax off his shoulder. He shouted incoherently as he ran, then as he jumped up the barbican’s face and scrabbled for a foothold in the steep rubble slope. He was at the right-hand edge of the broken fort and he could see down the southern face of Harfleur where the harbor lay. Defenders on the walls could also see him, and their crossbow bolts thumped into the barbican, but Hook had rolled into the cave that was a ledge of rubble sheltered by collapsed timbers. There was scarce room to move in the space that was little more than a wild dog’s den. Now what? Hook wondered. The crossbow bolts were hissing just beyond his shallow refuge. He could hear men shouting and it seemed to Hook that the French shouted louder, evidence they believed they were winning. He leaned slightly outward trying to get a glimpse of Sir John, but just then an eddy of wind blew a great gout of smoke to shroud Hook’s aerie.
Yet just to his right, toward the face of the barbican, he saw the metal hoops that strapped three great tree trunks together, and the hoops, he thought, made a ladder upward and the smoke was hiding him and so he leaped across and clung to the timbers with his left hand while his boots found a small foothold on another of the iron rings. He reached up with the poleax and hooked it over the top ring and hauled himself up, up, and he was nearly at the top and the French had not seen him because of the smoke and because they were watching the howling mass of Englishmen who were trying to clamber up the barbican’s center where the slope was the least precipitous. Bolts, stones, and broken timbers rained down on them, while the English arrows flitted through the smoke in answer.
“Hook!” a voice roared beneath him. “Hook, you bastard! Pull me up!”
It was Sir John Cornewaille. Hook lowered the poleax, let Sir John grip the hammer head, and then hauled him across to the timbers.
“You don’t get ahead of me, Hook,” Sir John growled, “and what in Christ’s name are you doing here? You’re meant to be shooting arrows.”
“I wanted to see what was on the other side of this ruin,” Hook said. Flames crept up the timbers, getting closer to Sir John’s feet.
“You wanted to see…” Sir John began, then gave a bark of laughter. “I’m getting goddam roasted. Pull me up more.” Hook again used the poleax to lift Sir John, this time to the top of the timbers. The two of them were like flies on a broken, burning pillar, perched just below the makeshift parapet, but still unseen by the defenders. “Sweet Jesus Christ and all his piss-drinking saints, but this seems a good enough place to die,” Sir John said, and slipped the sling of his battle-ax off his shoulder. “Are you going to die with me, Hook?”
“Looks like it, Sir John.”
“Good man. Push me up first, then join me, and let’s die well, Hoo
k, let’s die very well.”
Hook took hold of the back of Sir John’s sword belt and, when he got the nod, heaved. Sir John vanished upward, tumbled over the wall, and gave his war-shout. “Harry and Saint George!” And for Harry, Saint George, and Saint Crispinian, Hook followed.
And screamed.
EIGHT
“You won’t die here,” Saint Crispinian said.
Hook hardly heard the voice because he was screaming a battle cry that was part terror and part exhilaration.
Hook and Sir John had reached the top of the barbican where the remnants of the fighting platform lay. The English bombardment had shattered the barbican’s face so that the earth and rubble filling had spilled out and what had once been the fighting platform was now a crude lumpy space. The rearward wall, looking toward the city’s Leure Gate, was much less damaged and served as a screen to hide what happened on the broken, rough summit from the defenders of Harfleur’s walls. That summit was now a treacherous heap of earth, stones, and burning timbers, which was crammed with crossbowmen and men-at-arms. Hook and Sir John had come from their left flank, and now Sir John attacked the enemy like the avenging angel.
He was fast. That was why he was the most feared tournament fighter in Christendom. In the time it took a man to strike a blow, Sir John gave two. Hook saw it because, once again, it seemed to him that time itself had slowed. He was moving to Sir John’s right, aware suddenly that Saint Crispinian had broken his silence and feeling a great surge of relief that the saint was still his patron. Hook lunged with his poleax as Sir John used his double-bladed battle-ax in short brutal strokes. The first smashed the roundel protecting a man-at-arms’s knee, the second, a rising slash, gutted a crossbowman, and the third felled the man-at-arms whose knee had been broken. Another man-at-arms turned to drive a sword at Sir John, but Hook’s poleax sliced into his side, piercing the edge of his breastplate and throwing him back on the men behind. Hook just kept ramming, driving the man back, crushing him into his comrades, and Sir John was making a whooping noise, a sound of pure joy. Hook was screaming, though he was not aware of it, and using his huge archer’s strength to push the enemy back while Sir John was taking advantage of their confusion to chop, wound, and kill.
Hook wrenched the poleax back, but the spear point was trapped in the man’s armor. “Take this!” Sir John said sharply, thrusting the ax at Hook, and later, much later when the fight was over, Hook marveled at Sir John’s utter calm in the middle of a fight. Sir John had seen Hook’s predicament and solved it, even though he was under attack himself. He gave Hook the ax and, in the time it took Hook to take it, Sir John drew his sword. It was Sir John’s favorite sword, the one he called Darling, and it was a heavier blade than most, strong enough to survive hard lunges into steel plate. Sir John used it to keep the enemy off balance, letting Hook do the killing now. Hook’s first blow drove the ax into a helmet, wrenching the whole visor loose so it hung askew. “Cheap steel!” Sir John said, and his sword flickered at men’s faces, making them retreat, and Hook drove the blade into an armored belly and saw the blood well out bright and fast. “Flag!” Sir John bellowed. “Bring me my goddam flag!”
Hook was standing with his feet apart, driving the ax at men who were hardly fighting back. They were hampered by the bodies at their feet and cowed by Sir John’s sheer skill and ferocity. A determined man could have attacked into Sir John’s sword and Hook’s ax, but instead the defenders tried to back away from the blades while the Frenchmen behind pushed them forward. “Trois!” Sir John was counting the men he had wounded or killed, “quatre! Come on, you goddam bastards! I’m hungry!” Hook’s ax was the more dangerous weapon because of its power. The blade crumpled armor like parchment or chopped into flesh like a slaughterman’s cleaver, and Hook was grimacing as he swung and the enemy thought he was smiling, and that smile was more frightening than the blade. The sheer press of Frenchmen made it impossible for their crossbowmen to take aim, while the surviving rear wall and the obscuring smoke hid the fight from the bowmen on the towers of the Leure Gate. Sir John was shouting and Hook was keening a mad noise and their blades were red. Hook was not trying to kill now, he was just thrusting the enemy back and putting men on the ground to make a barrier. A fallen man-at-arms made an upward cut with his sword, but Hook saw the lunge coming, took a half-step to one side, slammed the ax down hard onto the man’s visor, heard the gurgling noise as the heavy blade crushed steel into flesh, swung the ax back to dent a man’s breastplate, and then rammed the weapon forward to push a third man backward.
“My flag!” Sir John shouted again, “I want these bastards to know who’s killing them!”
His standard-bearer suddenly tumbled over the wall behind, and with him came more men-at-arms wearing Sir John’s lion. “Kill the bastards!” Sir John screamed, but the bastards had taken enough. They were spilling through a gap in the rearward wall of the barbican and scrambling down a ladder or hurling themselves at a steep slope of spilled rubble before running through the smoke for the town’s gate. The rising sun was lighting that smoke. Screaming Englishmen were killing the last defenders who could not reach the gap in time. One man held out his glove in token of surrender, but an archer beat him down with a long-hafted hammer and another skewered him with a poleax.
“Enough!” a voice shouted. “Enough! Enough!”
“Hold your blows!” Sir John called. “Hold it, I said!”
“God be thanked!” the man who had first called to end the killing said, and Hook saw it was the king who, sword in hand, suddenly knelt on the rubble and crossed himself. The king’s surcoat, its bright badge crossed by Saint George’s red, was scorched. A springolt bolt thumped into one of the timbers facing the town, making the wall quiver. “Extinguish the flames!” the king called, getting to his feet. He pulled off his helmet and its leather liner so that his thick cropped hair stuck up in small, sweat-dark clumps. “And someone have pity on that man!” He gestured at the Frenchman who had tried to surrender, and who now writhed and moaned as blood soaked the faulds just beneath his breastplate. The poleax was still embedded in his belly. A man-at-arms drew a knife, felt for the gap in the armor protecting the dying man’s throat, and stabbed home once before working the blade around inside the gullet. The man convulsed, blood bubbled from the holes in his dented visor, then he gave a spasm and was still. “God be thanked,” the king said again. An archer suddenly fell to his knees and Hook thought the man was praying, but instead he vomited. Crossbow bolts were striking the barbican’s rear wall, their strikes sounding like flails beating on a threshing floor. The king’s banner was flying from the barbican now and the heavy cloth twitched as the bolts ripped and tore at the weave. “Sir John,” the king said, “I must thank you.”
“For doing my duty, sire?” Sir John asked, going to one knee, “and this man helped,” he added, gesturing at Hook.
Hook also dropped to one knee. The king gave him a glance, but showed no recognition. “My thanks to you all,” Henry said curtly, then turned away. “Send heralds!” he ordered one of his entourage, “and tell them to yield the town! And bring water for the flames!”
Water was poured on the flames, but the fire had penetrated deep into the barbican’s shattered timbers and they smoldered on, seeping a constant and choking smoke about the captured bastion. Its ragged summit was garrisoned by archers now, and that night they manhandled the Messenger, one of the smaller cannon, up to its summit, and that gun splintered the timbers of the Leure Gate with its first shot.
The heralds had ridden to that gate after the barbican’s capture, and they had patiently explained that the English would now demolish the great gate and its towers and that the fall of Harfleur was thus inevitable, and that the garrison should therefore do the sensible, even the honorable, thing and surrender before more men died. If they refused to surrender, the heralds declared, then the law of God decreed that every man, woman, and child in Harfleur would be given to the pleasure of the English. “Think of y
our pretty daughters,” a herald called to the garrison’s commanders, “and for their sake, yield!”
But the garrison would not surrender, and so the English dug new gun-pits closer to the town, and they hammered the exposed Leure Gate, demolishing the towers on either side and bringing down its stone arch, yet still the defenders fought back.
And the first chill wind of summer’s end brought rain.
And the sickness did not end and Henry’s army died in blood, vomit, and watery shit.
And Harfleur remained French.
It all had to be done again. Another assault, this time on the wreckage of the Leure Gate and, to make sure the defenders could not concentrate their men on that southwestern corner of the ramparts, the forces of the Duke of Clarence would assault the Montivilliers Gate on the town’s far side.
This time, Sir John said, they were going into the town. “The goddam bastards won’t surrender! So you know what you can do with the bastards! If it’s got a prick, you kill it, if it’s got tits, you hump it! Everything in that town is yours! Every coin, every ale-pot, every woman! They’re yours! Now go and get them!”