Some readers may bridle at the central premise of this series: that a scant handful of homegrown volunteer warriors could successfully stand against the combined might of an entire army of heavily fortified professional soldiers.
As unlikely as it seems, this exact scenario was repeated time and again in British history. One of the best examples took place in 1415 in what has become famous as the Battle of Agincourt. Not only did a vastly inferior British force confront the best and boldest knights of France on a muddy farm field a stone’s throw away from the little northern town, but the beleaguered British dealt them a blow never to be forgotten.
Henry’s ragged no-hope army was largely made up of volunteers and vassals, most of them sick with dysentery and exhausted from a summer-long campaign in miserable weather. Harried and hopelessly outnumbered, they prepared to face the flower of French nobility a few miles from Agincourt. The French army, under King Charles VI’s commander, Constable D’Albert, numbered in excess of twenty thousand men, mostly knights. Opposing them, King Henry V commanded around six thousand ragged and starving men—but, of those, five thousand were archers, and most of them Welsh.
On that bright Saint Crispin’s day in October, the great French army was massacred. Accounts of the battle read like a “What Not To Do” handbook of combat. The French produced blunder after blunder in bewildering array, so many as to be almost literally incredible. Even so, it would have taken a military miracle for French horse-mounted knights to succeed when, by some estimates, upwards of seventy-two thousand arrows were loosed in the first fateful minute of the conflict. Of this devastating power, historian Philip Warner writes, “Fear of the longbow swept through France. Its deadly long-range destruction made it seem an almost supernatural weapon.” Prayers against it were offered in churches at the time; this was a last resort, for nothing else came close to stopping it.
Britain’s losses that day in the fields of Agincourt numbered around one hundred—and many of those were noncombatants: unarmed, defenceless baggage boys and chaplains who were slaughtered out of extreme frustration by the already-beaten French who attacked the supply wagons encamped a mile or so from the battle field. On the other side of the equation, the French lost around two thousand counts, barons, and dukes; well over three thousand knights and men-at-arms; and more than one thousand common soldiers for a tally in excess of six thousand dead. These numbers are conservative: some accounts of the time estimate that as many as twelve thousand were killed or captured that day.
In any event, it was a defeat so devastating that it would be a generation or more before France could regain its military confidence against the British. As military historian Sir Charles Oman put it: “That unarmoured men should prevail against men cased with mail and plate on plain, open ground was reckoned one of the marvels of the age.”
Decisive as it may have been, Agincourt was not by a very long shot the first battle to be decided by the longbow, nor would it be the last. But it was, perhaps, the most powerful demonstration of a now little-remembered law of medieval combat—namely, that when two opposing forces met, those with the most archers would invariably win. A sort of corollary stated that when both sides boasted roughly the same number of archers, the side with the most Welsh archers would win. Such was the highly recognized talent of the Cymry with the longbow, and their renowned fighting spirit.
As we are once again reminded by the British chronicle of the Saxon kings, the Brenhinedd y Saesson: “The men of Brycheiniog and the men of Gwent and the men of Gwynllwg rebelled against the oppression of the Ffreinc. And then the Ffreinc moved their host into Gwent; and they gained no profit thereby, but many were slain in the place called Celli Garnant. Thereupon, soon after that, they went with their host into Brycheiniog, and they gained no profit thereby, but they were slain by the sons of Idnerth ap Cadwgan, namely, Gruffydd and Ifor . . .”
This rebellion provoked a reaction: “In that year King William Rufus mustered a host past number against the Cymry. But the Cymry trusted in God with their prayers and fastings and alms and penances and placed their hope in God. And they harassed their foes so that the Ffreinc dared not go into the woods or the wild places, but traversed the open lands sorely fatigued, and thence returned home empty-handed. And thus the Cymry defended their land with joy.”
It was precisely this fierce and tenacious spirit that the Normans faced in their ill-advised invasion of Wales. The unrivalled talent with the longbow—though born in the forests and valleys of Wales—was honed to lethal perfection in the white heat of contention following William II’s decision to extend the dubious benefits of his reign beyond the March. It was a decision which sparked a conflict that was to sputter and flare for the next two hundred years or more, and provided the fertile ground from which sprang the legends featuring that shrewd archer, Robin Hood.
Wily Welsh archers were not the only plague in William’s life, however; he also suffered from that acute affliction of his time: fear of purgatory.
Like a great many prominent men,William Rufus found himself in continual debt to the church, paying out huge sums of money for prayers to be said for the departed under his purview. All throughout the Middle Ages, abbeys and monasteries large and small did a roaring trade in penitential prayer, employing their priests on a perpetual, round-the-clock basis. The holy brothers prayed for their patrons and their patrons’ families, of course, and also for the souls of those unfortunates their patrons might have killed. For the right fee, the local abbot could guarantee that the requisite time in purgatory would be shortened, or even excused altogether, and no one would have to suffer eternal damnation.
Quaint as it might seem today, buying and selling prayers for cash was a business conducted in dead earnest at the time. For it would be difficult to overestimate the fear of hell and its attendant horrors for the medieval mind. As tangible proof of this deep-seated and widespread phobia, the abbeys rose stone by ornately carved stone to dominate the medieval landscape of Europe. These beautifully wrought works of art can still be visited a thousand years later: belief made physically manifest.
Though greatly reduced in every way now, all through the Middle Ages the monasteries amassed enormous wealth on the exchange of prayer for silver, becoming ever more powerful, extending their influence into all areas of medieval life and commerce. It was to be their downfall in the end. For when the wealth and power grew so massive as to exceed that of the monarchy, the threatened kings fought back.
For William II, bucking the trend was not an option. He was caught in the stifling embrace of a system he could neither control nor ignore. He was not the last monarch to discover that the need for money to pay his debt to the church would intrude on, if not dictate, his political agenda. Decisions of polity often bowed before the expediency of keeping the clergy cheerful—even in weightier matters such as war and peace. The medieval king might not like it, but more often than not he swallowed his resentment and did what was necessary to pay up. Whoever said heaven would come cheap?
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Book One in the Song of Albion Trilogy
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Chapter 1
AN AUROCHS IN THE WORKS
It all began with the aurochs.
We were having breakfast in our rooms at college. Simon was presiding over the table with his accustomed critique on the world as evidenced by the morning’s paper.
“Oh, splendid,” he sniffed. “It looks as if we have been invaded by a pack of free-loading foreign photographers keen on exposing their film—and who knows what else—to the exotic delights of Dear Old Blighty. Lock up your daughters, Bognor Regis! European paparazzi are loose in the land!”
He rambled on awhile, and then announced: “Hold on! Have a gawk at this!” He snapped the paper sharp and sat up straight—an uncommon posture for Simon.
“Gawk at what?” I asked idly. This thing of his—reading the paper aloud to a running commentary
of facile contempt, scorn, and sarcasm, well mixed and peppered with his own unique blend of cynicism—had long since ceased to amuse me. I had learned to grunt agreeably while eating my egg and toast. This saved having to pay attention to his tirades, eloquent though they often were.
“Some bewildered Scotsman has found an aurochs in his patch.”
“You don’t say.” I dipped a corner of toast triangle into the molten center of a soft-boiled egg and read an item about a disgruntled driver on the London Underground refusing to stop to let off passengers, thereby compelling a train full of frantic commuters to ride the Circle Line for over five hours. “That’s interesting.”
“Apparently the beast wandered out of a nearby wood and collapsed in the middle of a hay field twenty miles or so east of Inverness.” Simon lowered the paper and gazed at me over the top. “Did you hear what I just said?”
“Every word. Wandered out of the forest and fell down next to Inverness—probably from boredom,” I replied. “I know just how he felt.”
Simon stared at me. “Don’t you realize what this means?”
“It means that the local branch of the RSPCA gets a phone call. Big deal.” I took a sip of coffee and returned to the sports page before me. “I wouldn’t call it news exactly.”
“You don’t know what an aurochs is, do you?” he accused. “You haven’t a clue.”
“A beast of some sort—you said so yourself just now,” I protested.
“Really, Simon, the papers you read—” I flicked his upraised tabloid with a disdainful finger. “Look at these so-called headlines: ‘Princess Linked to Alien Sex Scheme!’ and ‘Shock Horror Weekend for Bishop with Massage Parlor Turk!’ Honestly, you only read those rags to fuel your pessimism.”
He was not moved. “You haven’t the slightest notion what an aurochs is. Go on, Lewis, admit it.”
I took a wild stab. “It’s a breed of pig.”
“Nice try!” Simon tossed his head back and laughed. He had a nasty little fox-bark that he used when he wanted to deride someone’s ignorance. Simon was extremely adept at derision—a master of disdain, mockery, and ridicule in general.
I refused to be drawn. I returned to my paper and stuffed the toast into my mouth.
“A pig? Is that what you said?” He laughed again.
“Okay, okay! What, pray tell, is an aurochs, Professor Rawnson?”
Simon folded the paper in half and then in quarters. He creased it and held it before me. “An aurochs is a sort of ox.”
“Why, think of that,” I gasped in feigned astonishment. “An ox, you say? It fell down? Oh my, what won’t they think of next?” I yawned. “Give me a break.”
“Put like that it doesn’t sound like much,” Simon allowed. Then he added, “Only it just so happens that this particular ox is an ice-age creature which has been extinct for the last two thousand years.”
“Extinct.” I shook my head slowly. “Where do they get this malarkey? If you ask me, the only thing that’s extinct around here is your native skepticism.”
“It seems the last aurochs died out in Britain sometime before the Romans landed—although a few may have survived on the continent into the sixth century or so.”
“Fascinating,” I replied.
Simon shoved the folded paper under my nose. I saw a grainy, badly printed photo of a huge black mound that might or might not have been mammalian in nature. Standing next to this ill-defined mass was a grimlooking middle-aged man holding a very long, curved object in his hands, roughly the size and shape of an old-fashioned scythe. The object appeared to be attached in some way to the black bulk beside him.
“How bucolic! A man standing next to a manure heap with a farm implement in his hands. How utterly homespun,” I scoffed in a fair imitation of Simon himself.
“That manure heap, as you call it, is the aurochs, and the implement in the farmer’s hands is one of the animal’s horns.”
I looked at the photo again and could almost make out the animal’s head below the great slope of its shoulders. Judging by the size of the horn, the animal would have been enormous—easily three or four times the size of a normal cow. “Trick photography,” I declared.
Simon clucked his tongue. “I am disappointed in you, Lewis. So cynical for one so young.”
“You don’t actually believe this”—I jabbed the paper with my fin-ger—“this trumped-up tripe, do you? They make it up by the yard—manufacture it by the carload!”
“Well,” Simon admitted, picking up his teacup and gazing into it, “you’re probably right.”
“You bet I’m right,” I crowed. Prematurely, as it turned out. I should have known better.
“Still, it wouldn’t hurt to check it out.” He lifted the cup, swirled the tea, and drained it. Then, as if his mind were made up, he placed both hands flat on the tabletop and stood.
I saw the sly set of his eyes. It was a look I knew well and dreaded. “You can’t be serious.”
“But I am perfectly serious.”
“Forget it.”
“Come on. It will be an adventure.”
“I’ve got a meeting with my adviser this afternoon. That’s more than enough adventure for me.”
“I want you with me,” Simon insisted.
“What about Susannah?” I countered. “I thought you were supposed to meet her for lunch.”
“Susannah will understand.” He turned abruptly. “We’ll take my car.”
“No. Really. Listen, Simon, we can’t go chasing after this ox thing. It’s ridiculous. It’s nothing. It’s like those fairy rings in the cornfields that had everybody all worked up last year. It’s a hoax. Besides, I can’t go—I’ve got work to do, and so have you.”
“A drive in the country will do you a world of good. Fresh air. Clear the cobwebs. Nourish the inner man.” He walked briskly into the next room. I could hear him dialing the phone, and a moment later he said, “Listen, Susannah, about today . . . terribly sorry, dear heart, something’s come up . . . Yes, just as soon as I get back . . . Later . . . Yes, Sunday, I won’t forget . . . cross my heart and hope to die. Cheers!” He replaced the receiver and dialed again.
“Rawnson here. I’ll be needing the car this morning . . . Fifteen minutes. Right. Thanks, awfully.”
“Simon!” I shouted. “I refuse!”
This is how I came to be standing in St. Aldate’s on a rainy Friday morning in the third week of Michaelmas term, drizzle dripping off my nose, waiting for Simon’s car to be brought around, wondering how he did it.
We were both graduate students, Simon and I. We shared rooms, in fact. But where Simon had only to whisper into the phone and his car arrived when and where he wanted it, I couldn’t even get the porter to let me lean my poor, battered bicycle against the gate for half a minute while I checked my mail. Rank hath its privileges, I guess. Nor did the gulf between us end there. While I was little above medium height, with a build that, before the mirror, could only be described as weedy, Simon was tall and regally slim, well muscled, yet trim—the build of an Olympic fencer. The face I displayed to the world boasted plain, somewhat lumpen features, crowned with a lackluster mat the color of old walnut shells. Simon’s features were sharp, well cut, and clean; he had the kind of thick, dark, curly hair women admire and openly covet. My eyes were mouse gray; his were hazel. My chin drooped; his jutted.
The effect when we appeared in public together was, I imagine, much in the order of a live before-and-after advertisement for Nature’s Own Wonder Vitamins & Handsome Tonic. He had good looks to burn and the sort of rugged and ruthless masculinity both sexes find appealing. I had the kind of looks that often improve with age, although it was doubtful that I should live so long.
A lesser man would have been jealous of Simon’s bounteous good fortune. However, I accepted my lot and was content. All right, I was jealous too—but it was a very contented jealousy.
Anyway, there we were, the two of us, standing in the rain, traffic whizzing by, buses dis
gorging soggy passengers on the busy pavement around us, and me muttering in lame protest. “This is dumb. It’s stupid. It’s childish and irresponsible, that’s what it is. It’s nuts.”
“You’re right, of course,” he agreed affably. Rain pearled on his driving cap and trickled down his waxed-cotton shooting jacket.
“We can’t just drop everything and go racing around the country on a whim.” I crossed my arms inside my plastic poncho. “I don’t know how I let you talk me into these things.”
“It’s my utterly irresistible charm, old son.” He grinned disarmingly. “We Rawnsons have bags of it.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Where’s your spirit of adventure?” My lack of adventurous spirit was something he always threw at me whenever he wanted me to go along with one of his lunatic exploits. I preferred to see myself as stable, steady-handed, a both-feet-on-the-ground, practical-as-pie realist through and through.
“It’s not that,” I quibbled. “I just don’t need to lose four days of work for nothing.”
“It’s Friday,” he reminded me. “It’s the weekend. We’ll be back on Monday in plenty of time for your precious work.”
“We haven’t even packed toothbrushes or a change of underwear,” I pointed out.
“Very well,” he sighed, as if I had beaten him down at last, “you’ve made your point. If you don’t wish to go, I won’t force you.”
“Good.”
“I’ll go alone.” He stepped into the street just as a gray Jaguar Sovereign purred to a halt in front of him. A man in a black bowler hat scrambled from the driver’s seat and held the door for him.
“Thank you, Mr. Bates,” Simon said. The man touched the brim of his hat and hurried away to the porters’ lodge. Simon glanced at me across the rain-beaded roof of the sleek automobile and smiled.
“Well, chum? Going to let me have all the fun alone?”