3. A Second Chance (24 page)

They were pressed together so tightly that the forces behind them were unable to move forward in support. And their archers, so far back behind the lines, were powerless.

Not so the English, shooting volley after volley into the flailing mass. They never stopped. They were pitiless. Some military leader once said: ‘Always leave your enemy a golden bridge to retreat by.’ The English had no golden bridge. They were fighting for their lives in a foreign country and they showed no mercy. There was no hope for anyone out there in the mud.

It got worse.

When their arrows were expended, and with the entire French army at a virtual standstill, the English archers picked up their mallets and poleaxes, exploded out from behind their stakes, and waded in.

These were powerful men. It takes a lot of strength to pull a bow. Unarmoured and unencumbered, they skipped neatly over the dead and laid about them. French men-at-arms, trapped in the mud, went down like trees.

And then it got even worse.

Not having any clear idea of what was happening, the second line, now eager to get to grips with the foe themselves, advanced, pushing the remains of the first line directly into the arms of the English and their stakes.

I’d been to the Somme in 1917. I’d briefly served there in a French hospital. The sight of men, screaming, impaled on stakes or barbed wire is not something anyone should see once. Let alone twice.

There was nothing anyone could do. Unable even to raise their weapons in the crush, unable to advance, unable to retreat, the first rank were just sitting – or standing – targets.

The second rank of French men-at-arms, eager for their share of what they perceived as the day’s glory, clambered over their fallen comrades and straight into the English, who were fighting like madmen.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of Frenchmen were passed back down the line as prisoners of war. After all, it was every man for himself. Every man had the right to return home laden with booty and ransomeable prisoners. For them, that was the whole point. Who cared who sat on the French throne so long as they went home rich?

I could hear the cries and pleas of the fallen all around, the screams of injured and terrified horses, and shouted orders as French commanders desperately tried to restore order and organise a controlled retreat. And, rising above everything, the triumphant shouts of the English as they slaughtered very nearly an entire generation of the French nobility.

It was only when I moved to change a disk that I realised how stiff and cramped I had become. Hours had passed and we’d been completely lost in what was happening around us.

‘We should move,’ said Peterson, hoarsely. ‘Look at all these prisoners. Let’s get down to the baggage train. We really need to see what’s happening there.’

I was torn. Half of me wanted to see what was happening at the baggage train. The other half wanted to see the triumphant English archers standing on heaps of dead men and sticking their unamputated fingers up at the French.

But Henry’s order to kill the French prisoners is controversial to this day and needed to be investigated.

We wriggled back to the pod and dumped what we had so far. He handed me a fresh recorder and pulled on a small sword. ‘You record. I’ll keep an eye out.’

He was as good with a sword as a bow. I nodded.

We inched our way through the woods. The baggage-train was at the rear, hidden, to some extent among, the trees.

The English had circled the wagons long before American settlers made that popular and placed their wounded – of whom there were remarkably few – in the middle.

A few women were present. Camp followers, maybe a wife or two, maybe even a French girlfriend. Who knows? At any rate, I wouldn’t be too out of place.

Young boys ran hither and thither, bearing messages and slopping water in buckets too heavy for them. Off to one side, sitting in the mud, the captured French nobility awaited the outcome of the battle. Hundreds of them. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Contemporary estimates put the final number at around seventeen hundred. All guarded, as far as I could see, by two men and a small dog.

‘My God,’ said Peterson, softly. ‘No wonder.’

I knew what he meant. There was a second army sitting here. Defeated and exhausted for the moment but that could change in an instant. If this lot armed themselves and fell on Henry from the rear, it would all be over in minutes. No wonder Henry gave the order.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘This is no place for prudent and sensible historians. Or us.’

I agreed. For once.

Then, suddenly, it was too late.

Figures moved among the trees.

A shout rang out. Those who could grabbed their swords. A woman screamed.

The trees were suddenly alive with men – not men-at-arms, but French peasants, poorly dressed and barefoot but clutching knives, scythes, and clubs.

Whether they were under the instructions of the main French force or simply engaging in a bit of private enterprise has never been clear. Even as I watched, three of them turned on a small boy and hacked him down. An elderly chaplain approached them, holding out his arms in protest, and he was stabbed too.

People scattered, screaming, trying to escape into the trees. One woman seized an old pike and stood defiantly over her unconscious man. Not everyone was running.

She jabbed and swung. Like most women of her age, she knew how to defend herself.

No one deserves to die. But some people deserve to live. I said, ‘Go,’ to Peterson, who leaped across the space, roaring like a bull. He thumped two of them with the flat of his blade. Painful, but not fatal. The rest fled.

I picked up a piece of wood and swung at them as they passed, making contact with at least one of them.

I wanted to see what the prisoners were doing. They’d surrendered; taken themselves out the fight. Everyone knew the drill. The rules of war. What would they do? Would they join in?

Of course they would. They must have been convinced Henry and his rabble army were, at that moment, being cut to pieces by their countrymen. They weren’t going to sit around and wait for humiliating rescue.

Suddenly, Henry really did have another army at his back. This was the moment when it could have gone either way.

We should have gone. We should have left them to get on with it. But most of the people in the baggage train weren’t soldiers, or warriors, or noblemen – they were the little people. Just like me.

I laid about me as hard as I could. Others were fighting back as well.

The attackers were greedy, fortunately. They’d come for whatever they could scavenge. Most of them were more interested in the contents of the wagons or making off with the spare horses than massacring old men, small boys, and women. Someone pulled out a pack. The contents tipped all over the ground and suddenly they were fighting each other and not us.

Peterson pushed me against a wagon and stood in front of me, sword raised. He looked big enough and ugly enough to be avoided for the minute.

French peasants were overrunning the whole camp. Later estimates put their numbers at several hundred. That was a lot – and if you added the seventeen hundred odd prisoners – this was no place to be.

‘This is no place to be,’ shouted Peterson. ‘Move. Do not stop to save anyone or subvert the course of History in any way. Just move.’

And immediately disobeyed his own orders.

A man lay dead, his guts spilling everywhere. Lying amongst a tangle of bloody intestines was a horn. Peterson grabbed it and blew.

The first sound was just a bubbly squeak, but he tried again. The second attempt was better and the third had the whole Robin Hood thing going for it. Faintly, in the distance, I heard a reply.

He tossed the horn to someone else. Help would come. Henry would despatch some two hundred desperately needed archers from the front to quell whatever was happening at the rear – and order the execution of French hostages. Most of me didn’t want to see that, but part of me did.

His actions were understandable. He was fighting for his life. He couldn’t afford to have over two thousand hostiles behind him. Some reports say the order was obeyed. Some say it wasn’t. Some say a few were killed, but not many. This was my own theory – it would take two hundred men a very long time to kill two thousand other men. And the French would hardly sit still and wait to be slaughtered. I was desperate to know what would happen next, but Peterson had hold of my arm. He was just pulling me around the side of a wagon, when, from nowhere – I swear I never saw him until he was right in front of us – some stunted peasant swung his rusty scythe at Peterson, partially severing his arm.

It went deep. I could tell. A great gout of blood sprayed through the air, all over both of us. I grabbed Peterson’s sword as he dropped it, but the peasant was gone. I never saw him go, either.

Peterson collapsed against me, unable to stifle his cry of pain.

Now we were in trouble.

We had to get out of here.

Now.

He was almost a dead weight. I dragged his good arm around my shoulders and tried to take his weight on my hip. Thank the god of historians he’d always been skinny.

He was conscious. He knew what was going on. He tried to help.

I got him just far enough away from the baggage train and into the trees before he collapsed. I ripped the linen scarf off my head and tied it around the wound. He barely made a sound. I suddenly became aware of tears running down my cheeks.

‘Come on, Tim. Stay with me. Stay with me, now.’

He said, between clenched teeth, ‘Oh, Jesus, Max. It hurts.’

‘I know, love. I know. Can you walk?’

‘Yes.’ He squinted up at me, his face unrecognisable with pain. ‘Love?’

I tried to grin at him. ‘You’ll never remember this tomorrow. I can say whatever I like. Can you lend me a lot of money?’

He grunted as I tightened the bandage. ‘Not a problem. As much as you like. We’ve both … got the life expectancy … of a mayfly, anyway.’

I finished bandaging and looked at him properly. He was white, cold, and shaking with shock. Any minute now, he’d lose consciousness.

‘I need to get you back to the pod. It’s not safe here.’

Indeed, it wasn’t. I could hear people crashing through the undergrowth all around us. Shrieks and screams echoed through the trees, although who was killing whom was anyone’s guess. In the heat of battle, it would very much be a case of stab first and ask questions later.

I got him to his feet somehow. His arm dangled uselessly. I suspected he’d never have full use of it again. At least I’d slowed the bleeding. I tucked his cold hand inside his tunic to try to ease the weight.

He was so good. So brave. He never made a sound as we limped along the path. Behind us, the noise of battle grew more muted. On the other hand, the sounds of pursuit and sudden death were all around us.

Two big advantages, though. Our clothing blended well – thank you Wardrobe – and our move to investigate events at the baggage train had actually brought us nearer to Number Eight. If I craned my neck, I could see it. I began to entertain a hope we might get away, after all.

Wrong.

We were never going to get out of this.

I heard a shout behind us and looked around. A group of four or five men were heading towards us, swords drawn, but still some distance away. If Tim had not been wounded, we could have strolled to the pod, waved them a casual goodbye, and easily made our escape.

But Tim could barely move.

‘Go,’ he said. ‘Leave me.’

I was barely conscious of making the decision. In fact, the word decision implies choice. There was no choice to make. No difficult decision to wrestle with.

I pushed him off the path into a small hollow. Bushes overhung the far side. He fell, fortunately cushioned by drifts of still dry leaves. I jumped down after him.

There was so much I wanted to say to him. Well, it would never be said now. Even as he rolled over and said, ‘What …?’ I was fishing around for what I wanted. A nice smooth rock. Definitely no sharp edges.

I found one and said, ‘Listen to me, Dr Peterson. Wait here for the rescue party. They will come. Make it back safely. Have a good life. That’s a command,’ and tightened my grip on the rock.

Still not quite sure what was happening, he said, ‘What …?’

I slugged him with the rock.

Not too hard – oh God, not too hard.

He fell back soundlessly on to the soft ground. I rolled him under the bushes with his sword and covered him with leaves as best I could.

No time for goodbyes.

No time for … anything.

There was a time in my life when I never thought I would have any friends. Actually there was a time when I never thought I’d have a life, either.

I’d had both, against all the odds. But everything has to be paid for and my time to pay had arrived.

I scrambled out of the hollow, lifting my head cautiously over a fallen log. There were three of them that I could see, working their way slowly towards us. We had a minute, maybe less.

I pulled myself over the top, took one last look at where Tim lay hidden, and drew a deep breath. And ran. Away from Tim. Away from the pod. As fast as I could.

You can’t cry and run. One or the other. So I ran.

It seemed to me I’d been running all my life. The Somme, Whitechapel, Nineveh, Troy, Cambridge, the Cretaceous – you name it, I’ve raced through it.

This was my last run. Make it count, Maxwell.

I flew through that wood. I pounded along the path, jumping over logs, half-blinded by branches whipping across my face. I felt no fear. No fatigue. I flew. I could hear shouts and pounding footsteps behind me. They’d catch me eventually – and it wouldn’t be pleasant – but it wouldn’t last long. It would soon be over, and my friend Tim would be safe.

In the meantime …

I tucked in my chin, pumped my elbows, and went for it. Major Guthrie would have been so proud.

I ran and ran, twisting and turning, never once looking behind me, all my attention on drawing them away from Tim and the pod.

I was going so fast that I never saw the one who stepped out from behind the tree. I cannoned into him. He staggered but remained on his feet.