CHAPTER XV
A volume might well be written on what I must compress into this chapter. On the narrow canvas of these few pages must be outlined the crowded incidents of that noble fight above Crecy, whereof your historians know but half the truth, and these same lines, charged with the note of victory, full of the joyful exultation of the mêlée and dear delight of hard-fought combat—these lines must, too, record my own illimitable grief.
If while I write you should hear through my poor words aught of the loud sound of conflict, if you catch aught of the meeting of two great hosts led on by kingly captains, if the proud neighing of the war-steeds meet you through these heavy lines and you discern aught of the thunder of charging squadrons, aught of the singing wind that plays above a sea of waving plumes as the chivalry of two great nations rush, like meeting waves, upon each other, so shall you hear, amid all that joyful tumult, one other sound, one piercing shriek, wherefrom not endless scores of seasons have cleared my ears.
Listen, then, to the humming bow-strings on the Crecy slopes—to the stinging hiss of the black rain of English arrows that kept those heights inviolable—to the rattle of unnumbered spears, breaking like dry November reeds under the wild hog’s charging feet, as rank behind rank of English gentlemen rush on the foe! Listen, I say, with me to the thunderous roar of France’s baffled host, wrecked by its own mightiness on the sharp edge of English valor, listen to the wild scream of hireling fear as Doria’s crossbowmen see the English pikes sweep down upon them; listen to the thunder of proud Alençon sweeping round our lines with every glittering peer in France behind him, himself in gemmy armor—a delusive star of victory, riding, revengeful, on the foremost crest of that wide, sparkling tide! Hear, if you can, all this, and where my powers fail, lend me the help of your bold English fancy.
It was a hard-fought day indeed! Hotly pursued by the French King, numbering ourselves scarce thirty thousand men, while those behind us were four times as many, we had fallen back down the green banks of the Somme, seeking in vain for a ford by which we might pass to the farther shore. On this morning of which I write so near was Philip and his vast array that our rearguard, as we retreated slowly toward the north, saw the sheen of the spear-tops and the color on whole fields of banners, scarce a mile behind us. And every soldier knew that, unless we would fight at disadvantage, with the river at our backs, we must cross it before the sun was above our heads. Swiftly our prickers scoured up and down the banks, and many a strong yeoman waded out, only to find the hostile water broad and deep; and thus, all that morning, with the blare of Philip’s trumpets in our ears, we hunted about for a passage and could not find it, the while the great glittering host came closing up upon us like a mighty crescent stormcloud—a vast somber shadow, limned and edged with golden gleams.
At noon we halted in a hollow, and the King’s dark face was as stern as stern could be. And first he turned and scowled like a lion at bay upon the oncoming Frenchmen, and then upon the broad tidal flood that shut us in that trap. Even the young Prince at his right side scarce knew what to say; while the clustering nobles stroked their beards and frowned, and looked now upon the King and now upon the water. The archers sat in idle groups down by the willows, and the scouts stood idle on the hills. Truth, ’twas a pause such as no soldier likes, but when it was at the worst in came two men-at-arms dragging along a reluctant peasant between them. They hauled him to the Sovereign, and then it was:
“Please your Mightiness, but this fellow knows a ford, and for a handful of silver says he’ll tell it.”
“A handful of silver!” laughed the joyful King. “God! let him show us a place where we can cross, and we will smother him with silver! On, good fellow!—the ford! the ford! and come to us to-morrow morning and you shall find him who has been friend to England may laugh henceforth at sulky Fortune!”
Away we went down the sunburnt, grassy slopes, and ere the sun had gone a hand-breadth to the west of his meridian a little hamlet came in sight upon the farther shore, and, behind it a mile, pleasant ridges trending up to woods and trees. Down by the hamlet the river ran loose and wide, and the ebbing stream (for it was near the sea) had just then laid bare the new-wet, shingly flats, and as we looked upon them, with a shout that went from line to line, we recognized deliverance. So swift had been our coming that when the first dancing English plumes shone on the August hill-tops the women were still out washing clothes upon the stones, and when the English bowmen, all in King Edward’s livery, came brushing through the copses, the kine were standing knee-deep about the shallows, and the little urchins, with noise and frolic, were bathing in the stream that presently ran deep and red with blood. And small maids were weaving chaplets among those meadows where kings and princes soon lay dying, and tumbling in their play about the sunny meads, little wotting of the crop their fields would bear by evening, or the stern harvest to be reaped from them before the moon got up.