Chapter Thirteen.
The day after Agincourt.
“Urbs Coelestis! Urbs Beata!
Super petram collocata,
Urbs in portu satis tuto,
De lonquinquo te saluto;
Te saluto, te suspiro,
Te affecto, te requiro.”
Fourteen years had passed away since the burning of the Lady Marnell. A new king had risen up, who was not a whit less harshly inclined towards the Lollards than his predecessor had been. This monarch, Henry the Fifth, of chivalrous memory, was riding over the field of Agincourt, the day after the battle, surrounded by about twenty of his nobles. Behind the nobles rode their squires, and all around them on the field lay the dead and dying.
“Saw you yonder knight, Master Wentworth,” inquired one of the squires of his next neighbour, “that we marked a-riding down by the woody knoll to the left, shortly afore the fight? I marvel if he meant to fight.”
“He had it, if he meant it not,” answered the other; “the knight, you would say, who bore three silver arrows?”
“Ay, the same. What befell him?”
“A party of French skirmishers came down upon him and his squire, and they were both forced to draw sword. The knight defended himself like a gallant knight, but—our Lady aid us!—they were twelve to two, or thereabouts: it was small marvel that he fell.”
“He did fall? And the squire?”
“The squire fought so bravely, that he earned well his gilded spurs. (Gilded spurs were the mark of a knight.) He stood over his master where he fell, and I trow the French got not his body so long as the squire was alive; but I saw not the end of it, for my master bade me thence.”