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the enemy. ‘Montjoie Saint Denis!’ they shouted. ‘Montjoie Saint Denis and King Jean!’
    Crossbowmen were on the French flanks. Each archer had a companion who carried a great pavise, a shield large as a man behind which the crossbow could be rewound safe from the deadly English arrows. Those arrows were not flying yet. The leading men of the French advance could see the great hedge, and the wide gaps, and through those gaps were the English beneath their banners. The French visors were up and would stay up till the arrows came. The men in the foremost ranks were all in plate armour and most of those men did not carry shields; only the men who could not afford the expensive plate carried a willow shield. Some advanced with shortened lances, hoping to thrust an Englishman off balance and let another man kill the fallen enemy with axe or mace or morningstar. Few men carried swords. A sword would neither thrust nor cut through armour. An armoured man must be beaten down by lead-weighted weapons, beaten and crushed and pulped.
    The dauphin did not shout. He insisted on being in the very front rank, though he was not a strong man like his father. Prince Charles was thin, weak-limbed, long-nosed, with skin so pale it looked like bleached parchment, and with legs so short and arms so long that some courtiers called him
le singe
behind his back, but the ape was a clever young ape, a judicious ape, and he knew that he must lead. He must be seen to lead. He wore a suit of armour made for him in Milan and burnished with sand and vinegar until it reflected the sun in dazzling shards of light. His breastplate was covered by a blue jupon on which fleurs-de-lys were embroidered in golden threads, while in his right hand was a sword. His father had insisted he learn to fight with a sword, but he had never mastered the weapon. Squires six years younger could beat him in mock combat, which was why the knights who flanked him were men seasoned in fighting and carrying heavy shields to protect the prince’s life.
    ‘We should have let them starve,’ the dauphin said as they neared the hedge.
    ‘Sire?’ a man shouted, unable to hear the dauphin’s voice over the sound of drums, trumpets and cheers.
    ‘They have a strong position!’
    ‘All the more glory when we beat them, sire.’
    The dauphin thought that remark stupid, but he held his tongue, and just then a flicker of white caught his eye and the man who had made the stupid remark reached over and slammed down the prince’s visor so hard that the dauphin was momentarily deafened and half stunned. ‘Arrows, sire!’ the man shouted.
    The arrows were being shot from the ends of the hedge, slantwise across the advancing battle. More arrows came from small groups of archers who guarded the gaps in the hedge. The dauphin heard the missiles thumping into shields or clanging on armour. He could hardly see now. The visor had bars close together, his world was dark, sliced by bright sunlit slits, and he sensed, rather than saw, that the men about him had speeded up. They were closing ranks in front of him and he was too weak to force his way past them.
    ‘Montjoie Saint Denis!’ the men-at-arms shouted, and went on shouting so there was a great roar, an unending roar as the warriors of France hurried into the hedge’s gap. The archers there had retreated. It occurred to the prince that the English were silent, and just then they shouted their war cry. ‘Saint George!’
    And there was the first harsh sound of steel on steel.
    And screams.
    And so the carnage began.
     
    ‘Fetch your horses!’ the Earl of Oxford called to Thomas. The earl, who was second in command to the Earl of Warwick, wanted most of the men who had protected the ford to return to the high ground. ‘I’ll leave Warwick’s archers here,’ he said to Thomas, ‘but you take your men up the hill!’
    It was a long way up the hill and it would be much quicker to ride. ‘Horses!’ Thomas shouted across the river. Servants and grooms brought them over the ford, past the upturned wagon. Keane, riding a mare bareback, led them.
    ‘Have the bastards gone?’ the Irishman asked, looking past the dead and dying horses to where the French knights had vanished in the trees.
    ‘Find out for me,’ Thomas said. He did not want to abandon the ford only to discover that the French had renewed their attack on the baggage train.
    Keane looked surprised, but whistled his two dogs and led them northwards towards