In a Dark Wood Wandering (56 page)

Charles knew that it would be impossible to come to an accord with England in the present circumstances; he too expected war. For Bonne's sake he decided to live, during the visit of the Duchess of Brittany, in a style befitting the name and rank of the House of Orléans. To this end he borrowed money, mortgaging his property. He relished the sight of Bonne, beautifully dressed, moving through festively decorated halls, and presiding at a well-stocked table. The
guests were entertained royally with hunts, balls and tournaments. While the Duchess of Brittany and her advisors spoke to him about the need to prepare for war at once—they had heard that King Henry was on the point of taking ship with a large army—Charles, with a smile, toasted his young wife's health. In her honor he had ordered the sleeve of his tunic embroidered with the opening words of a love song which the minstrels sang in parts: Madame, je suys plus joyeulx… , Madame, I am overjoyed. My wife, never have I been as happy as I am now.

The moon hid behind clouds; a fine, even, cold rain fell. There was no wind, but the raw damp of the long night seemed far less bearable than a dry cold. On the muddy plain the French army stood with its vast camp of tents: hundreds of bonfires smouldered in the dank mist. Torches flashed like comets through the darkness. Flags and banners hung limply; from the pointed tops of the tents water trickled down the gold and silver escutcheons.

Inside the tents the noble lords sat over their wine, cards and conversation; the men in the open fields tried to keep warm by stamping their feet, running hard or shoving, with curses, for a place near one of the fires. The Gascons and Bretons who, as usual, made up the majority of the foot soldiers, were especially exasperated. They hated campaigns in the northern part of the Kingdom like the plague. At Arras they had had their fill of rain, fog and mud. What possessed the captains to keep waging war in the fall? This was already the night of the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of October; winter was at hand. What the devil! The English should have been attacked long before this—as soon as they landed; when they besieged Harfleur; when, enfeebled by sickness and losses, they began their rash, presumptuous march north to Calais across enemy terrain. This view was shared by most soldiers, horsemen and knights. Those who had some knowledge of strategy believed that the Constable and other royal commanders were wrong to cling to the old rules of knightly combat with a formal challenge and a traditional order of battle.

This desire to exact a proper vengeance for the defeats suffered by the French half a century before at Crecy and Poitiers had caused the supreme command to delay endlessly, much to the annoyance of the more experienced soldiers. No one doubted the imminence
of victory: that a handful of exhausted Englishmen could be routed without much trouble. It was a matter of fifty thousand against eleven or twelve thousand at the most. The counts and barons would not allow themselves to be deprived of such a wonderful opportunity for military renown. From their treasuries and arsenals they brought forth their splendid armor, ancestral broadswords, crowned and plumed helmets, unrolled their stitched and painted banners, re-gilded their coats of arms. The honor of France was about to be defended against the arch-enemy; the long-awaited moment had arrived. Everyone in the Kingdom who bore a famous name had a grandfather, father or kinsman to avenge. The lions ascendant, the hawks and eagles, the griffins and panthers were ready with pointed claw and cleft tongue—they did not fear the British unicorn.

In an open patch of ground between the tents, heavily armored horses covered with hanging scalloped cloths stood together motionless in the rain; only their eyes gleamed moistly behind the large openings in their almost ridiculous iron masks. Those who were to ride these monsters were already being thrust into their armor. Straddle-legged, with extended arms, the knights stood in their tents. Through the drawn-up flaps of the tent-openings, they exchanged words with their friends and kin who were all similarly occupied. Meanwhile, beakers and bowls made the rounds; it was senseless to fast on the eve of such an easy conquest.

The men of lesser rank, camped under tents of hide, wood and straw, showed no more inclination to abstain from the pleasures to which they were accustomed than their lords; they had fetched supply wagons inside the camp, shared food and drink and rolled in the mud with the whores who were part of the army's equipment. The horses, driven together into a gigantic herd between the palisades, neighed incessantly, upset by the fires and the rain. Dark shapes loomed outside the reddish fog which hovered over the camp: thickets, a row of trees, an abandoned hut. When the moon became faindy visible through the clouds and the fog, there could be discerned against the night sky the massive towers and ramparts of Agincourt, after which the field was named.

Toward midnight Charles d'Orléans left the Constable's tent where the commanders were gathered—the Dukes of Bourbon, Bar and Alencon, the Counts d'Eu, Vendome, Marie, Salm, Roussy and Dammartin, the Marshal de Longny, Admirals de Brabant and Dam-pierre and a great number of captains. After long arguments they
had decided who would stand at the head of vanguard, center, rearguard and flanks; because each of the great lords coveted a place in the front lines, these ranks would be formed almost exclusively of princes and nobles with their heralds, pages, squires and armed following. Knights of lower rank, horsemen, bowmen and foot soldiers had been relegated to the rear guard.

Charles, who had listened quietly all evening to the battle of words, got up to leave as soon as he heard that he would be one of the leaders of the vanguard; he had confidendy sought the post, his rank entitled him to it. He felt little inclination to remain in that company until daybreak. He had agreed to risk a reconnaissance of the English camp, which lay a few miles away against the hill of Maisoncelles. The separate parts of his armor lay displayed in his tent: mechanically he examined the arm and leg pieces, tested the mobility of the scales at the neck and gaundets. He had a new breastplate of burnished black iron decorated with golden lilies. By the light of the torch overhead, he saw his face reflected vaguely in the glittering surface. He looked away; a shudder of cold apprehension passed through this body. For five long years he had done almost nothing except wander about at the head of an army, but he had never yet engaged in combat—never released an arrow, never used a sword or lifted his shield in self-defense, except for exercise. Charles knew himself well enough to recognize that he had little talent for military heroism, but after all he was a man and naturally he wanted to prove himself. He had not yet killed a knight because he had never enjoyed man-to-man combat. He had planned the reconnaissance so that he could march into battle as a fully worthy knight; he thought perhaps blows would fall on this eve of battle.

Before he left Blois he had exercised vigorously for a few weeks with lance and sword; he had exerted himself to the utmost, especially because Bonne was watching him from the window of her chamber. It was for her sake in the first place that he craved military fame; in addition he hoped to have an opportunity, if the English army should be defeated, to liberate his brother Jean. In any exchange of prisoners Charles' brother would undoubtedly be returned to France. But along with these thoughts a slight fear mounted to his heart, a fear of unknown dangers, of the arrow destined perhaps to strike him, of the enemy who could defeat him in a hand-to-hand melee, of the death which he dreaded especially just now. He picked up his sword, a beautiful narrow weapon with a cruciform hilt which
his mother had brought from Italy as part of her dowry; for a moment he held it high between the palms of his hands. The blade, catching the glow of the flame, seemed a long line of light. Charles had ordered the weapon consecrated before the altar of Saint-Sau-veur in Blois; now at midnight in his tent at Agincourt he entreated once more in a whisper the blessing of God and Saint-Denis on the sword with which he must avenge the dishonor of France and win back his brother.

He heard voices and footsteps outside his tent; the curtain before the entrance was pushed aside and two men in coats of mail and tunics entered: Arthur, Count de Richmont, Brittany's younger brother, and Marshal Boucicaut. Charles had met Boucicaut, his father's great friend and confidant, for the first time only a comparatively short time ago; the Marshal had returned a few years earlier from Italy, ousted by the rebellious inhabitants of Genoa and its environs, who had risen up against domination by the French. Boucicaut had aged greatly: his hair was grey, his figure less upright, but his solemn frank eyes and his self-assurance still inspired confidence. Richmont was a young man of Charles' age, lively, loquacious and restless. He would represent Brittany in the coming conflict.

“Orléans,” said Richmont, “we are ready. I see that you too have been wise enough not to wear armor; one can't possibly walk with all that steel on one's back. We just want to see how the land lies with the English. It's so quiet over there; they seem to have put out all their fires. I wonder what they're doing.”

Boucicaut shook his head, looked at Charles, and remarked calmly, “They're probably sleeping. They've had an arduous journey—twenty days' march through hostile territory without enough food and supplies. Tomorrow they face a serious challenge—they know that too.”

Richmont snorted incredulously and began to pull the hood of his hauberk over his head. “Last week during the battie on the Somme my troops captured a couple of Englishmen. It seems that when they talk among themselves about the size of our army, they say, ‘Enough to put to flight, enough to take prisoner, more than enough to kill.' And Henry insists that he is entirely satisfied with the number of his men. He says that God will help him, because the French are a race of sinners.”

Charles laughed, but Boucicaut interposed hastily, “Nonetheless
it does not behoove us to laugh at King Henry. No one can deny that he is a pious and honorable man who lives soberly and sets his soldiers a good example. It must be said to the credit of the English that they have no wine or women with them, and do not waste precious time with curses and dice. Our army is notorious for licentiousness and crime … and righdy. The common soldiers' behavior is an abomination.”

Richmont, who was helping Charles put on his coat of mail—Charles had silently begun to make himself ready for the nocturnal expedition—shrugged and said impatiently: “Ah, come, Messire Boucicaut. I know Henry. Don't forget that I lived in England for four years. I have watched the fellow from close by. He can swig liquor with the best of them, and as far as women and dice are concerned, believe me, he needs no instruction there either. Oh yes, he's now God's own right hand or at least he acts as if he were—but I myself think he is nothing but a hypocrite.”

“You are probably exaggerating, Richmont,” Charles said, carefully buckling on his shoulder belt. “Alas, I cannot say that King Henry is wrong when he calls us a quarrelsome, disorderly mob. God knows we do not seem able to govern the Kingdom as we should.”

Young Richmont was not listening. He walked back and forth in the tent, examining Charles' armor spread on the camp bed, testing the point of a dagger on his finger.

‘Whatever else King Henry may be,” Charles went on, “a coward he is not. He could have entrenched himself within a city when he received our challenge two weeks ago. But no—he came forward and said to us quietly, in a wholly dignified manner, that it did not behoove him to appoint a day or place but that he would meet us in the open at any time…”

“Yes, yes, I know all that.” Richmont turned with a nervous, jerky movement. “Are you ready now, Orléans?”

“We are taking two hundred men with us, my lord,” said Boucicaut. During this conversation he had stood silently at the entrance to the tent. He disapproved of Richmont's familiarity with the King's nephew; when he was young, vassals of the French crown had had better manners. He watched Charles with some concern. He thought that the young man bore himself with dignity and spoke sensibly, but it seemed to him that Charles d'Orléans was a little too mild, that he lacked the fire to assert authority, to be a leader of men.
Louis d'Orléans, when he was twenty years old could, if it came to a crunch, show swift, sharp insight and unflagging persistence. Now it
had
come to a crunch. Boucicaut was astute enough to know that the size of the French army by no means guaranteed invincibility. The supreme command was shared by too many leaders, the diverse troops were thrown together hastily for the most part and were not dependent upon one another for discipline and order; thus morale was affected by mutual jealousy. In addition, Boucicaut disagreed with the proposed plan of organized attack: horsemen would make up both flanks—that would look pretty, but the terrain was unsuitable for it. They had chosen the valley between Agincourt and the adjacent town of Tramecourt as the battlefield. A brook ran the length of the narrow valley; since it was impossible to deploy the cavalry freely there, the Constable had decided that the battie order would be thirty-two rows deep. Boucicaut could see no advantages in this plan either: it would have to lead immediately to a confused hand-to-hand mêlée. He had made his objections clear, but he had not been able to convince d'Albret to change his mind. The Constable's plan had been accepted by a majority.

Charles, Richmont and the Marshal set out to join the men who were to accompany them on the expedition and who were waiting for them behind the farthest row of tents. When the moon, which had been visible through an opening in the clouds, disappeared as gusts of rain began to blow over them, the men hurried into the darkness.

“My God, what mud!” Richmont murmured irritably to Charles, who was behind him. “That promises something for tomorrow. Up to the ankles …”

They moved forward through the soft mass of mud. After a while they noticed that the marsh was becoming more solid; pres-endy they began to ascend and found themselves on the sloping terrain before Maisoncelles, the hamlet where the English army was spending the night. Hedges and a series of thickets separated the expedition from the enemy camp. In the air was the unmistakable smell of horses and damp, smouldering wood. The dull glow of an almost extinguished fire was visible here and there through the branches. Richmont remained at the edge of the trees with most of the men while Boucicaut and Charles set out on their scouting expedition accompanied by half a dozen men; they intended to see as much of the enemy camp as they could without being discovered.
Charles was much taken with the idea of being the unseen close watcher of the English; he was more interested in doing that than in coming to blows with them.