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rough track that led along the river’s northern bank. Most were piled high, though with what it was impossible to tell because rough cloth was strapped over the loads. ‘Plunder,’ Sam said, sounding disapproving.
    ‘I wonder how many monasteries, castles, and churches went to filling that big wain,’ Thomas said as he watched the first wagon roll into the ford. It was hauled by four big horses and, to his relief, the cumbersome wagon crossed the river smoothly, the water scarce reaching the two axles.
    ‘It’s not just plunder from rich folk,’ Sam said, ‘they take anything! Spits, harrows, weed-hooks, cauldrons. I wouldn’t mind if they just took from rich folk, but if it’s metal it’ll be taken.’
    A horseman wearing the Earl of Warwick’s golden lion badge spurred along the line of carts and wagons. ‘Faster!’ he shouted.
    ‘Mother of God,’ Sam said in disgust, ‘the poor bastards can’t go any quicker!’ The drivers had to turn their vehicles onto the ford and it was an awkward place for the largest wagons. ‘Slow and steady will do it.’
    Scores of women and children walked beside the wagons. They were the camp followers every army attracted. One vast wain was driven by a woman. She was vast herself with a head of unruly brown curls on which a cap perched like a diminutive bird on a big nest. Two small boys were beside her, one holding a wooden sword and the other clinging to his mother’s ample skirts. Her wagon was heaped with plunder and decorated with ribbons of every colour. She grinned at Thomas and Sam. ‘He thinks the bloody Frenchies are coming for us!’ she said, jerking her head towards the horseman. She flicked her whip at one of the lead horses and the wagon went into the ford. ‘Hup, hup!’ she called. ‘Don’t you boys get left behind!’ she called merrily to Thomas’s archers, then shook the reins so that her four horses put their weight into their collars and hauled the wagon up to the far bank.
    Some of the women and children rode in empty wagons that had carried food and fodder, all of it eaten, while other carts just carried empty barrels in which the precious arrows had been held by leather discs so that their feathers were not crushed. There were plenty of those wagons, their barrels reminding Thomas of his escape from Montpellier. ‘Keep going!’ the horseman shouted. He looked nervously over his shoulder, staring north up the rising valley that led between the English-held hill and le Champ d’Alexandre.
    Thomas looked that way and saw banners moving on the English hill. They were coming towards him, mere flickers of colour at the crest. It was the Earl of Warwick’s men, marching to guard the river. So the retreat was happening. There had been no trumpet blasts, no seven long notes to herald a truce. Instead there would be a river to cross and, Thomas assumed, a long day keeping the French from interfering with the crossing.
    ‘Don’t goddamned dally, for Christ’s sake!’ the horseman shouted. He was annoyed because a heavily laden cart had paused at the place where the track turned, and so he spurred his horse alongside the two draught horses and slapped one of their rumps with the flat of his sword. The horse panicked, half reared, but was restrained by the harness. It twisted to the right and the other horse followed and both beasts bolted and the driver hauled on the reins, but the wagon bounced on the track, the horses tried to turn away from the river and the wagon slowly tipped over the causeway’s edge. The horses screamed. There was a crash as the whole wagon fell sideways to block the ford. Plundered cauldrons clattered into the marsh. ‘Jesus!’ the panicking horseman who had caused the trouble shouted. Only two dozen wagons had crossed the Miosson, and at least three times that number was now baulked on the wrong bank.
    ‘Jesus!’ Sam echoed. Not because the wagon had overturned, but because there were more banners in sight. Only these flags were not on the hill. They were in the wooded valley between the hills, a valley still shrouded in shadow because the sun had not yet reached it, and beneath the trees were flags and beneath the flags were horsemen. A mass of horsemen.
    Coming to the river.
     
    Marshal d’Audrehem and the Lord of Douglas led the heavily armoured horsemen whose task was to shatter the archers on the left wing of the English army. They had three hundred and twenty men, all of them experienced and