“Sir Bertrand has not forgotten, belike, how these English made him prisoner at Auray; perchance he is afraid of the like ill-hap befalling again.”
“On the morrow,” said Du Guesclin, with a look that made even the haughty Spaniard quail, “it shall be seen which of us two is the more afraid.”
When a deserter brought word to the English, an hour later, that the Spaniards meant to come forth and meet them in the field next morning, the shout of stern joy that rolled like thunder from rank to rank startled even their over-confident foes, for then, as in after days, “it was ever the wont of the English to rejoice greatly when they beheld the enemy.”
On the morrow the two hosts joined battle, and Bertrand’s words were amply fulfilled. When Chandos’s column of levelled lances and charging steeds came crashing into Don Tello’s division, the boaster’s heart died within him, and he fled with two thousand of his men, leaving bare the flank of the Spanish centre, on which the Black Prince himself instantly fell like a thunderbolt. And beside him, with a savage glare in his pale-blue eyes, his red beard bristling like a lion’s mane, and his sword reeking with slaughter, rode Pedro the Cruel, athirst for his brother’s blood.
But here the fight went hard, for Henry himself led the centre, and around him fought his bravest followers. The untrained Spanish levies fell like mown grass before men whose whole life had been one long battle; but new thousands succeeded, and the harvest of death went on, while Henry, striking right and left with the force of a giant, made his mighty voice heard above all the din—
“Brave gentlemen, you have made me your king; stand by me now as loyal men and true!”
Nobly did the doomed men redeem their fatal pledge, fighting on even when the battle was lost beyond recovery, to protect their king’s escape. Nor was the heroic self-sacrifice vain; for, just as the last of the gallant band went down, Henry dashed through the ford of the Najarra unpursued, to renew the struggle a few months later, with better fortune.
He might not have got off so well but for a false report of his having made for Navaretta, which drew away most of the English soldiers, who, fired with the hope of a king’s ransom, followed the chase so hotly that they burst pell-mell into the town with the flying Spaniards. The pursuers made at once for Henry’s quarters, where, though they did not find him, they found a rich camp-equipage and service of gold plate, that made every face radiant.