1356

renowned, all of them able to afford horse armour that could resist an English arrow. The destriers wore chamfrons, metal plates over their faces with holes for their eyes, while their chests were protected by leather, mail and even plate. The armour made the big horses slow, but almost invulnerable.
    D’Audrehem and Douglas expected to attack across the valley and up the long slope towards the forest of Nouaillé, then skirt about the end of the hedge that protected and hid the enemy troops. They would walk their heavy horses across the valley, and walk up the slope, trusting to the armour to protect the great beasts. Once they had rounded the hedge they would spur the destriers into a lumbering gallop and so drive into the mass of English archers they expected to find. Maybe a thousand bowmen? And the big horses would carry them deep into that panicked mass where they would lay about with swords and axes. Destroy the archers, force them to run from the field, and then the horsemen would turn back to the French lines, dismount and take off their spurs, and then join the great attack that would fight on foot to hammer at the centre of the English army.
    That was the plan of battle: to use the heavily armoured horse to destroy the English archers, then slaughter the men-at-arms, but as d’Audrehem and Douglas had led their men over the brow of the western hill they saw the tips of English banners beyond the hedge, and those banners were moving southwards.
    ‘What are the bastards doing?’ D’Audrehem asked the question of no one.
    ‘Escaping,’ Douglas answered anyway.
    The eastern horizon was brightly lit by the rising sun and the forest was dark against that brightness, but the banners could be seen against the trees. There were a dozen flags, all of them moving southwards, and d’Audrehem looked that way and saw the glint of water in the depth of the valley. ‘Bastards are crossing the river!’ he said.
    ‘They’re running away,’ Douglas said.
    Marshal d’Audrehem hesitated. He was fifty years old and had spent almost all his adult years as a soldier. He had fought in Scotland, where he had learned to kill Englishmen, and then in Brittany, Normandy, and at Calais. He knew war. He was not hesitating because he feared what was happening, but because he knew the plan of battle must change. If they charged the far hill, aiming for where they believed the English left wing lay, they would find men-at-arms, not archers, and his mounted knights had been ordered to destroy the hated enemy bowmen. So where were the archers?
    ‘There’s a ford down there,’ a man said, pointing to the glint of water.
    ‘You know that?’
    ‘I grew up not three miles from here, sire.’
    ‘We’ll go to the ford,’ d’Audrehem decided. He turned his horse, which was caparisoned in a great cloth that bore the broad blue and white diagonal stripes of his livery. He carried a shield with the same bright colours, and his visored helmet had one white plume and one blue. ‘This way!’ he called and led the horsemen southwards.
    And this was easier than crossing the valley. Now, instead of pushing the heavy horses up the long slope of the English-held hill, they were riding downhill. They trotted. The horse armour clinked and jangled; the hooves thumped the dry turf. Some men carried lances, but most had swords. They were riding on open grassland, but ahead of them, where the valley dropped and widened into the larger valley of the Miosson, were trees, and beyond those trees d’Audrehem expected to find archers protecting the ford.
    The Lord of Douglas was on the right where a dozen of his own Scotsmen joined him. ‘Drop your visors when you see an arrow,’ he reminded them, ‘and enjoy the killing!’ He would enjoy it. The sport of the Douglas clan was killing Englishmen, and Douglas felt a fierce joy at the prospect of battle. He had dreaded that the interfering churchmen would arrange an escape for this English army, but instead the negotiations had failed and he was released to cry havoc. ‘And remember! If you see my cursed nephew then he’s to live!’ He doubted that he would find Robbie in the chaos of battle, but he still wanted the boy taken alive. Taken alive and then made to suffer. ‘I want the little bastard alive and weeping! Remember that!’
    ‘I’ll make him weep,’ Sculley answered, ‘weep like a baby!’
    Then the heavy horses were in the trees and the riders slowed as they ducked beneath