Читать книгу Three Great English Victories: A 3-book Collection of Harlequin, 1356 and Azincourt - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 24

Eleanor had been apprehensive about joining the English army. ‘They won’t like me because I’m French,’ she said.

‘The army’s full of Frenchmen,’ Thomas had told her. ‘There are Gascons, Bretons, even some Normans, and half the women are French.’

‘The archers’ women?’ she asked, giving him a wry smile. ‘But they are not good women?’

‘Some are good, some are bad,’ Thomas said vaguely, ‘but you I shall make into a wife and everyone will know you’re special.’

If Eleanor was pleased she showed no sign, but they were now in the broken streets of Poissy, where a rearguard of English archers shouted at them to hurry. The makeshift bridge was about to be destroyed and the army’s laggards were being chivvied across its planks. The bridge had no parapets and had been hurriedly made from whatever timbers the army had found in the abandoned town, and the uneven planking swayed, creaked and bent as Thomas and Eleanor led their horses onto the roadway. Eleanor’s palfrey became so scared of the uncertain footing that it refused to move until Thomas put a blindfold over its eyes and then, still shaking, it trod slowly and steadily across the planks, which had gaps between them through which Thomas could see the river sliding. They were among the last to cross. Some of the army’s wagons had been abandoned in Poissy, their loads distributed onto the hundreds of horses that had been captured south of the Seine.

Once the last stragglers had crossed the bridge the archers began hurling the planks into the river, breaking down the fragile link that had let the English escape across the river. Now, King Edward hoped, they would find new land to waste in the wide plains that lay between the Seine and the Somme and the three battles spread into the twenty-mile-wide line of the chevauchée and advanced northwards, camping that night just a short march from the river.

Thomas looked for the Prince of Wales’s troops while Eleanor tried to ignore the dirty, tattered and sun-browned archers, who looked more like outlaws than soldiers. They were supposed to be making their shelters for the coming night, but preferred to watch the women and call obscene invitations. ‘What are they saying?’ Eleanor asked Thomas.

‘That you are the most beautiful creature in all France,’ he said.

‘You lie,’ she said, then flinched as a man shouted at her. ‘Have they never seen a woman before?’

‘Not like you. They probably think you’re a princess.’

She scoffed at that, but was not displeased. There were, she saw, women everywhere. They gathered firewood while their men made the shelters and most, Eleanor noted, spoke French. ‘There will be many babies next year,’ she said.

‘True.’

‘They will go back to England?’ she asked.

‘Some, perhaps.’ Thomas was not really sure. ‘Or they’ll go to their garrisons in Gascony.’

‘If I marry you,’ she asked, ‘will I become English?’

‘Yes,’ Thomas said.

It was getting late and cooking fires were smoking across the stubble fields, though there was precious little to cook. Every pasture held a score of horses and Thomas knew they needed to rest, feed and water their own animals. He had asked many soldiers where the Prince of Wales’s men could be found, but one man said west, another east, so in the dusk Thomas simply turned their tired horses towards the nearest village for he did not know where else to go. The place was swarming with troops, but Thomas and Eleanor found a quiet enough spot in the corner of a field where Thomas made a fire while Eleanor, the black bow prominent on her shoulder to demonstrate that she belonged to the army, watered the horses in a stream. They cooked the last of their food and afterwards sat under the hedge and watched the stars brighten above a dark wood. Voices sounded from the village where some women were singing a French song and Eleanor crooned the words softly.

‘I remember my mother singing it to me,’ she said, plucking strands of grass that she wove into a small bracelet. ‘I was not his only bastard,’ she said ruefully. ‘There were two others I know of. One died when she was very small, and the other is now a soldier.’

‘He’s your brother.’

‘Half-brother.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know him. He went away.’ She put the bracelet on her thin wrist. ‘Why do you wear a dog’s paw?’ she asked.

‘Because I’m a fool,’ he said, ‘and mock God.’ That was the truth, he thought ruefully, and he pulled the dry paw hard to break its cord, then tossed it into the field. He did not really believe in St Guinefort; it was an affectation. A dog would not help him recover the lance, and that duty made him grimace, for the penance weighed on his conscience and soul.

‘Do you really mock God?’ Eleanor asked, worried.

‘No. But we jest about the things we fear.’

‘And you fear God?’

‘Of course,’ Thomas said, then stiffened because there had been a rustle in the hedge behind him and a cold blade was suddenly pressed against the back of his neck. The metal felt very sharp.

‘What we should do,’ a voice said, ‘is hang the bastard properly and take his woman. She’s pretty.’

‘She’s pretty,’ another man agreed, ‘but he ain’t good for anything.’

‘You bastards!’ Thomas said, turning to stare into two grinning faces. It was Jake and Sam. He did not believe it at first, just gazed for a while. ‘It is you! What are you doing here?’

Jake slashed at the hedge with his billhook, pushed through and gave Eleanor what he thought was a reassuring grin, though with his scarred face and crossed eyes he looked like something from a nightmare. ‘Charlie Blois got his face smacked,’ Jake said, ‘so Will brought us here to give the King of France a bloody nose. She your woman?’

‘She’s the Queen of bloody Sheba,’ Thomas said.

‘And the Countess is humping the Prince, I hear,’ Jake grinned. ‘Will saw you earlier, only you didn’t see us. Got your nose in the air. We heard you were dead.’

‘I nearly was.’

‘Will wants to see you.’

The thought of Will Skeat, of Jake and Sam, came as a vast relief to Thomas, for such men lived in a world far removed from dire prophecies, stolen lances and dark lords. He told Eleanor these men were his friends, his best friends, and that she could trust them, though she looked alarmed at the ironic cheer which greeted Thomas when they ducked into the village tavern. The archers put their hands at their throats and contorted their faces to imitate a hanged man while Will Skeat shook his head in mock despair.

‘God’s belly,’ he said, ‘but they can’t even hang you properly.’ He looked at Eleanor. ‘Another countess?’

‘The daughter of Sir Guillaume d’Evecque, knight of the sea and of the land,’ Thomas said, ‘and she’s called Eleanor.’

‘Yours?’ Skeat asked.

‘We shall marry.’