Grand climax stars English bow

1356

By Bernard Cornwell

Harper. 417 pp. $28.99

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Reviewed by Frank Wilson

On Sept. 19, 1356, a combined English and Gascon army under the command of Edward of Woodstock, the heir to the English throne who came to be known as the Black Prince, decisively defeated a larger French force near the city of Poitiers. It was one of England's three great victories in the Hundred Years' War (the others being Crecy and Agincourt).

The battle serves as the fortissimo conclusion to the latest installment of Bernard Cornwell's Grail Quest Series, featuring English bowman Sir Thomas of Hookton, whose role in life seems to be to rid the world of dangerous relics. This time he's in search of La Malice, said to be the sword that Peter used to cut off the ear of the High Priest's servant in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was arrested.

The English want the sword. So does the Church. Or at least, Cardinal Bessieres, the papal legate to the court of France, does. He wants to give it to King Jean I. If it comes in handy fighting the English - as Bessieres is certain it will - then the King will have to support Bessieres when a conclave is held to choose a successor to the seemingly frail Pope Innocent VI (who would, however, live for six more years). The cardinal's agent in the search for the sword is a Father Marchant, as heartwarmingly evil a cleric as one is likely to encounter.

Thomas heads a band of mercenaries called the Hellequin. They are a better sort of mercenaries: They pay for their provisions and are forbidden to rape. "The Hellequin had become rich on two things. The first was their leader, who was a good soldier, a supple thinker, and clever in battle . . . ."

The other factor in their success was their weapon, the English war bow:

It was a simple thing. A stave of yew, a little longer than the height of a man and preferably cut from one of the lands close to the Mediterranean. The bowyer would take the stave and shape it, keeping the dense heartwood on one side and the springy sapwood on the other . . . A peasant's weapon of yew, hemp, and horn, shooting an arrow from ash, hornbeam, or birch, tipped with a steel point and fledged with feathers taken from the wing of a goose, and always taken from the same wing so that the feathers curved in the same direction.

The Hellequin are a band of bowmen. They would have been large fellows. Estimates differ, but the draw weight of an English war bow seems to have been somewhere between 90 and 140 foot-pounds (draw weight means the amount of force in the bow when its string is pulled to the max). Further explanation would get rather technical, but rest assured: The bow packed a wallop, and an arrow tipped with a bodkin point could easily penetrate mail armor. There are also historical accounts of bodkin-tipped arrows penetrating steel armor at close range.

The bowmen could fire about six arrows a minute, and at that rate were pretty soon out of arrows. They would then march out onto the field of battle and dispatch their opponents with knives, maces, and the like. (The commonest cause of death at the Battle of Agincourt was a knife wound through the eye.)

We first meet Thomas and his men as they assist the Count of Labrouillade in getting back his wife from the Lord of Villon. The count proves to be a cruel and ungracious victor. He also tries to swindle the Hellequin out of their exact fee, figuring his lawyers will keep the matter in abeyance indefinitely. Thomas, however, chooses to settle the matter in his own way, out of court.

By now, Thomas has received a message from the Lord of Northampton, his liege, telling him to rendezvous with the English forces near Poitiers - and also to see if he can lay his hands on La Malice.

This will involve a visit to Avignon, and a brief audience with Pope Innocent. There he will also meet Cardinal Bessieres and Father Marchant, who will in time seriously injure Genevieve, Thomas' wife. She travels with her warrior husband because it is safer. He had rescued her from the stake, and he is himself under suspicion of heresy.

The outstanding feature of Cornwell's characters is that they do not come off as transplanted moderns. They are very much of their time. But Cornwell portrays them in a way that makes one realize that qualities remain in each of us that could easily make us of their time as well.

As it wends its way northward, Thomas' band is joined by others, notably a virgin knight - yes, you read that right - who finds himself desperately in love with the beautiful young woman whose misfortune is to be married to the Count of Labrouillade. At his wife's request, Thomas has placed this fair lady under his protection.

The knot tying together Cornwell's narrative threads is, of course, the great Battle of Poitiers, where the French monarch will be persuaded that foot soldiers, not cavalry, provide the best defense against the English war bow. La Malice plays its part, and, though unimpressive to look at, proves to be a formidable implement of war.