Free The Bow by Bill Sharrock Page B

he had been paid fifty shillings
and not five. From dawn to dusk, weather permitting, they were down
at the butts, or away at the bowyers’ yard. One bow took so much
use it cracked and they had to get another. Some of the arrows too
needed re-fletching, and Yevan showed Ralf how to wind a spiral of
linen thread through the flights to hold the quills securely to the
shafts. He taught him how to quickly string his bow, and then fit an
arrow to the string in one easy movement. Then he showed him how to
draw beyond the cheek to the ear, and loose swiftly, without pause,
to lift his rate of shooting. Again and again, he corrected his
stance, forcing him to stand sideways to the line of shot so that he
could aim as he drew the bow up.
    Ralf took all: the warnings, the curses, the cuffs of
encouragement, and the endless repetition of shot. He listened when
rebuked, and made no comment when praised. Moreover, not once did he
plead weariness or pain no matter how long the day, and never put
down his bow until Yevan gave the nod. And always James was there,
training alongside, but never saying a word. At last, one Sunday
down at the far butts by the salt marshes, as the February days
deepened under chill and heavy snow clouds, Yevan pronounced him a
halfway decent bowman. Ralf grinned from ear to ear, and opened his
mouth to speak, but simply shook his head as if in disbelief, and
took the masterbowman by the arm.
    Yevan shrugged him off with a good natured smile.
‘You’re welcome, young Ralf, and I thank ye for your silver, but
it’ll all be for nought if ye don’t keep to the training.’
    ‘ I promise,’ replied Ralf.
    'Promising is doing, boyo! Is that not right, James?’
    ‘ Aye it is, Yevan ap Griffiths, but ye’ve given this
lad more than most.’
    The Welshman grinned, and put his hand on Ralf’s
shoulder: ‘Ye’re a bowman now boyo, and there’s a little bit of
welsh in ye, that ye never had before. But remember this, I can do
nothing for you. It’s the bow will see ye home. Take yourself down
to the bowyer’s yard tomorrow, and spend what ye have on a good new
bow. Not wych elm, mind, or I’ll send ye back! I want to see strong
grained yew with a one twenty five draw weight at least.’
    ‘ One twenty five!’
    ‘ Aye, lad! And the shoulders on you tell me that
you’ll whip that to one forty without so much as a blink.’ He
laughed and clapped the Norwich apprentice on the back. Ralf beamed.
    They walked back to the town with an easterly at their
backs, and the first flurries of snow pattering against their cloaks.
    Two days later, the Earl of Dorset called an assembly
with trumpets and banners and heralds all a-scurry. The army was to
prepare for the march. Knights, captains and sergeants were summoned
by turn to the great coloured pavilion that the Earl had set up in
the centre of his camp. Orders were given to the victuallers,
requisitions for supply were written out, and bonuses on wages
promised to the first companies that paraded in good order before
their lord.
    Rumours flew around the town like sparrows: some said a
French force was marching against Harfleur; others said that Earl
Thomas had been told to launch a ‘chevauchee’ towards Paris; a
few said that the army was bound for the Vexin. Beneath the town
walls, battered seven months earlier by the twelve great guns of
Henry V’s siege train, the townsfolk set up stalls for a last
furious few days of buying and selling before the army marched.
    As the snow drifted down on the slushy streets,
alleyways and paths of Harfleur, equipment and stores were loaded
onto the carts and packhorses of the Earl’s household troops. All
around them archers and men-at-arms gathered, leading their horses
out onto the whitening field.
    James had bought a chestnut hack from a Breton
horse-dealer, while Ralf had found a shaggy coated pony in a shambles
courtyard and paid a shilling for him. They met their captain, Sir
Walter Hungerford by the tents that