"Agincourt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cornwell Bernard)

EIGHT

“You won’t die here,” Saint Crispinian said.

Hook hardly heard the voice because he was screaming a battle cry that was part terror and part exhilaration.

Hook and Sir John had reached the top of the barbican where the remnants of the fighting platform lay. The English bombardment had shattered the barbican’s face so that the earth and rubble filling had spilled out and what had once been the fighting platform was now a crude lumpy space. The rearward wall, looking toward the city’s Leure Gate, was much less damaged and served as a screen to hide what happened on the broken, rough summit from the defenders of Harfleur’s walls. That summit was now a treacherous heap of earth, stones, and burning timbers, which was crammed with crossbowmen and men-at-arms. Hook and Sir John had come from their left flank, and now Sir John attacked the enemy like the avenging angel.

He was fast. That was why he was the most feared tournament fighter in Christendom. In the time it took a man to strike a blow, Sir John gave two. Hook saw it because, once again, it seemed to him that time itself had slowed. He was moving to Sir John’s right, aware suddenly that Saint Crispinian had broken his silence and feeling a great surge of relief that the saint was still his patron. Hook lunged with his poleax as Sir John used his double-bladed battle-ax in short brutal strokes. The first smashed the roundel protecting a man-at-arms’s knee, the second, a rising slash, gutted a crossbowman, and the third felled the man-at-arms whose knee had been broken. Another man-at-arms turned to drive a sword at Sir John, but Hook’s poleax sliced into his side, piercing the edge of his breastplate and throwing him back on the men behind. Hook just kept ramming, driving the man back, crushing him into his comrades, and Sir John was making a whooping noise, a sound of pure joy. Hook was screaming, though he was not aware of it, and using his huge archer’s strength to push the enemy back while Sir John was taking advantage of their confusion to chop, wound, and kill.

Hook wrenched the poleax back, but the spear point was trapped in the man’s armor. “Take this!” Sir John said sharply, thrusting the ax at Hook, and later, much later when the fight was over, Hook marveled at Sir John’s utter calm in the middle of a fight. Sir John had seen Hook’s predicament and solved it, even though he was under attack himself. He gave Hook the ax and, in the time it took Hook to take it, Sir John drew his sword. It was Sir John’s favorite sword, the one he called Darling, and it was a heavier blade than most, strong enough to survive hard lunges into steel plate. Sir John used it to keep the enemy off balance, letting Hook do the killing now. Hook’s first blow drove the ax into a helmet, wrenching the whole visor loose so it hung askew. “Cheap steel!” Sir John said, and his sword flickered at men’s faces, making them retreat, and Hook drove the blade into an armored belly and saw the blood well out bright and fast. “Flag!” Sir John bellowed. “Bring me my goddam flag!”

Hook was standing with his feet apart, driving the ax at men who were hardly fighting back. They were hampered by the bodies at their feet and cowed by Sir John’s sheer skill and ferocity. A determined man could have attacked into Sir John’s sword and Hook’s ax, but instead the defenders tried to back away from the blades while the Frenchmen behind pushed them forward. “Trois!” Sir John was counting the men he had wounded or killed, “quatre! Come on, you goddam bastards! I’m hungry!” Hook’s ax was the more dangerous weapon because of its power. The blade crumpled armor like parchment or chopped into flesh like a slaughterman’s cleaver, and Hook was grimacing as he swung and the enemy thought he was smiling, and that smile was more frightening than the blade. The sheer press of Frenchmen made it impossible for their crossbowmen to take aim, while the surviving rear wall and the obscuring smoke hid the fight from the bowmen on the towers of the Leure Gate. Sir John was shouting and Hook was keening a mad noise and their blades were red. Hook was not trying to kill now, he was just thrusting the enemy back and putting men on the ground to make a barrier. A fallen man-at-arms made an upward cut with his sword, but Hook saw the lunge coming, took a half-step to one side, slammed the ax down hard onto the man’s visor, heard the gurgling noise as the heavy blade crushed steel into flesh, swung the ax back to dent a man’s breastplate, and then rammed the weapon forward to push a third man backward.

“My flag!” Sir John shouted again, “I want these bastards to know who’s killing them!”

His standard-bearer suddenly tumbled over the wall behind, and with him came more men-at-arms wearing Sir John’s lion. “Kill the bastards!” Sir John screamed, but the bastards had taken enough. They were spilling through a gap in the rearward wall of the barbican and scrambling down a ladder or hurling themselves at a steep slope of spilled rubble before running through the smoke for the town’s gate. The rising sun was lighting that smoke. Screaming Englishmen were killing the last defenders who could not reach the gap in time. One man held out his glove in token of surrender, but an archer beat him down with a long-hafted hammer and another skewered him with a poleax.

“Enough!” a voice shouted. “Enough! Enough!”

“Hold your blows!” Sir John called. “Hold it, I said!”

“God be thanked!” the man who had first called to end the killing said, and Hook saw it was the king who, sword in hand, suddenly knelt on the rubble and crossed himself. The king’s surcoat, its bright badge crossed by Saint George’s red, was scorched. A springolt bolt thumped into one of the timbers facing the town, making the wall quiver. “Extinguish the flames!” the king called, getting to his feet. He pulled off his helmet and its leather liner so that his thick cropped hair stuck up in small, sweat-dark clumps. “And someone have pity on that man!” He gestured at the Frenchman who had tried to surrender, and who now writhed and moaned as blood soaked the faulds just beneath his breastplate. The poleax was still embedded in his belly. A man-at-arms drew a knife, felt for the gap in the armor protecting the dying man’s throat, and stabbed home once before working the blade around inside the gullet. The man convulsed, blood bubbled from the holes in his dented visor, then he gave a spasm and was still. “God be thanked,” the king said again. An archer suddenly fell to his knees and Hook thought the man was praying, but instead he vomited. Crossbow bolts were striking the barbican’s rear wall, their strikes sounding like flails beating on a threshing floor. The king’s banner was flying from the barbican now and the heavy cloth twitched as the bolts ripped and tore at the weave. “Sir John,” the king said, “I must thank you.”

“For doing my duty, sire?” Sir John asked, going to one knee, “and this man helped,” he added, gesturing at Hook.

Hook also dropped to one knee. The king gave him a glance, but showed no recognition. “My thanks to you all,” Henry said curtly, then turned away. “Send heralds!” he ordered one of his entourage, “and tell them to yield the town! And bring water for the flames!”

Water was poured on the flames, but the fire had penetrated deep into the barbican’s shattered timbers and they smoldered on, seeping a constant and choking smoke about the captured bastion. Its ragged summit was garrisoned by archers now, and that night they manhandled the Messenger, one of the smaller cannon, up to its summit, and that gun splintered the timbers of the Leure Gate with its first shot.

The heralds had ridden to that gate after the barbican’s capture, and they had patiently explained that the English would now demolish the great gate and its towers and that the fall of Harfleur was thus inevitable, and that the garrison should therefore do the sensible, even the honorable, thing and surrender before more men died. If they refused to surrender, the heralds declared, then the law of God decreed that every man, woman, and child in Harfleur would be given to the pleasure of the English. “Think of your pretty daughters,” a herald called to the garrison’s commanders, “and for their sake, yield!”

But the garrison would not surrender, and so the English dug new gun-pits closer to the town, and they hammered the exposed Leure Gate, demolishing the towers on either side and bringing down its stone arch, yet still the defenders fought back.

And the first chill wind of summer’s end brought rain.

And the sickness did not end and Henry’s army died in blood, vomit, and watery shit.

And Harfleur remained French.

It all had to be done again. Another assault, this time on the wreckage of the Leure Gate and, to make sure the defenders could not concentrate their men on that southwestern corner of the ramparts, the forces of the Duke of Clarence would assault the Montivilliers Gate on the town’s far side.

This time, Sir John said, they were going into the town. “The goddam bastards won’t surrender! So you know what you can do with the bastards! If it’s got a prick, you kill it, if it’s got tits, you hump it! Everything in that town is yours! Every coin, every ale-pot, every woman! They’re yours! Now go and get them!”

And so the twin assaults streamed across the filled-in ditches and the arrows rained from the sky and the trumpets blared a challenge to the uncaring sun and the killing began again. And again it was Sir John Holland who led, which meant that Sir John Cornewaille’s men were in the front of the attack that swiftly captured the ruins of the Leure Gate and there, abruptly, were stopped.

The gate had once led into a closely-packed street of overhanging houses, but the garrison had pulled those buildings down to clear a killing space, behind which they had made a new barricade that had been mostly protected from the English gun-stones by the remnants of the old wall and gate. The Messenger, mounted on the barbican’s summit, had managed to shoot some stones at the fresh work, but it could only manage three shots a day and the French repaired the damage between each shot. The new wall was built from masonry blocks, roof timbers, and rubble-filled baskets, and behind it were crossbowmen, and as soon as the English men-at-arms appeared across the ruin of the Leure Gate the bolts began to fly.

Archers shot back, but the French had been cunning. The new wall had been made with chinks and holes through which the crossbowmen could shoot, and which were small enough to defeat the aim of most arrows. Hook, crouching in the rubble of the old gate, reckoned that for every crossbowman shooting there were another three or four men spanning spare bows so that the bolts never stopped. Most crossbowmen were lucky to shoot two bolts a minute, but the bolts were coming from the loopholes far more frequently and still more missiles spat from the high windows of the half-ruined houses behind the wall. This, Hook knew, was how Soissons should have been defended.

“We’ll have to bring up a gun,” Sir John snarled from another place in the ruined wall, but instead led a charge against the barricade, shouting at his archers to smother it in arrows. They did, but the crossbow bolts kept coming and even if the bolts failed to pierce armor they threw a man back by sheer force and when, at last, a half-dozen men managed to reach the wall and tried to pull down its timbers and stones, a cauldron was tipped over its coping and a stream of boiling fish oil spilled down onto the attackers. They ran and limped back, some gasping from the pain of the scalding, and Sir John, his armor slick with the oil, came back with them and dropped into the gate’s rubble and let loose a stream of impotent curses. The French were cheering. They waved taunting flags above their new low wall. A smoky haze shimmered behind the new rampart, promising that more heated oil would greet any new attack. The English catapults were trying to drop stones on the new wall, but most of the missiles flew long to crash down among the already shattered houses.

The sun climbed. The late summer’s heat had returned and both attackers and defenders roasted in their armor. Boys brought water and ale. Men-at-arms, resting in the shelter of the Leure Gate’s ruins, took off their helmets. Their hair was matted flat and their faces running with sweat. The archers crouched in the stones, sometimes shooting if a man showed himself, but for long periods neither side would loose an arrow or a bolt, but just wait for a target.

“Bastards,” Sir John spat at the enemy.

Hook saw two defenders struggling to remove an earth-filled basket from a section of the new wall. He half stood and loosed an arrow, just as a dozen other archers did the same. The two men fell back, each struck by arrows, but the basket fell with them and Hook saw a cannon barrel, squat and low, and he flattened himself in the gate’s ruins just as the cannon fired. The air whistled and screamed, stone chips were whipping in smoke, and a man gave a terrible long cry that turned to a whimper as the space in front of the wall was obscured by the thick smoke. “Oh, my God,” Will of the Dale said.

“You hurt, Will?”

“No. Just tired of this place.”

The French had loaded their cannon with a mass of small stones that had flayed the attackers. A man-at-arms was dead, a small hole punched clean through the top of his helmet. An archer staggered back toward the barbican, one hand clamped over an empty, bloody eye socket.

“We’re all going to die here,” Will said.

“No,” Hook said fiercely, though he did not believe his protest. The gun smoke cleared slowly and Hook saw that the earth-filled basket was back in its embrasure.

“Bastards,” Sir John spat again.

“We’re not giving up!” the king was shouting. He wanted to assemble a mass of men-at-arms and attempt to overwhelm the wall with numbers and his men were carrying orders to the Englishmen scattered in the old wall’s ruins. “Archers to the flanks!” a man shouted, “to the flanks!”

A French trumpeter began playing a short sharp melody. It was three notes, rising and falling, repeated over and over. There was something taunting in the sound.

“Kill that bastard!” Sir John shouted, but the bastard was hidden behind the wall.

“Move!” the king shouted.

Hook took a deep breath, then scrambled to his right. No crossbow bolts spat from the defenses. The garrison was waiting, he thought. Perhaps they were running short of bolts and so they were keeping what they had to greet the next assault. He sheltered by a stub of broken wall and just then the French trumpeter stood on the new rampart and raised his instrument to his lips, and Hook stood too, and the cord came back to his right ear, he loosed, and the string whipped his bracer and the goose-fledged arrow flew true and the bodkin point took the trumpeter in the throat and drove clean through his neck so that it stood proud at his nape. The braying trumpet screeched horribly and then ended abruptly as the man fell backward. More English arrows flitted above him as he disappeared behind the wall, leaving a fading spray of misted blood and the dying echo of the trumpet’s truncated call.

“Well done, that archer!” Sir John shouted.

Hook waited. The day became still hotter under a sun that was a great furnace in a sky clouded only by the shreds of smoke from the beleaguered city. The French had stopped shooting altogether, which only convinced Hook that they were saving their missiles for the assault they knew was coming. Priests picked their way among the ruins of the old wall, shriving the dead and the dying, while behind the wall, in the space between the ruined Leure Gate and the shattered barbican, the men-at-arms assembled under their lords’ banners. That force, at least four hundred strong, was easily visible to the defenders, but still they did not shoot.

One of Sir John’s pages, a boy of ten or eleven with a shock of bright blond hair and wide blue eyes, brought two skins of water to the archers. “We need arrows, boy,” Hook told him.

“I’ll bring some,” the boy said.

Hook tipped the skin to his mouth. “Why aren’t the men-at-arms moving?” he asked no one in particular. The king had assembled his assault force and the archers were in place, but a curious lassitude had settled over the attackers.

“A messenger came,” the page said nervously. He was a high-born lad, sent to Sir John’s household to learn a warrior’s ways, and in time he would doubtless be a great lord in shining armor mounted on a caparisoned horse, but for now he was nervous of the hard-faced archers who would one day be under his command.

“A messenger?”

“From the Duke of Clarence,” the page said, taking back the water-skin.

The duke, camped on the far side of Harfleur, was also attacking the city, though no sounds betrayed any fighting from that far-off gate. “So what did the messenger tell us?” Hook asked the page.

“That the attack failed,” the boy said.

“Sweet Jesus,” Hook said in disgust. So now, he reckoned, the king was waiting until his brother could mount another assault, and then the English would make one last effort, from both east and west, to overwhelm the stubborn defenders. And so Hook and his archers waited. If the king had sent new orders to his brother then they would take at least two hours to reach him, for the messenger had to ride far around the city’s north side and cross the flooded river by boat.

“What’s happening?” Sclate, the slow-witted laborer with a giant’s strength, asked.

“I don’t know,” Hook confessed. Sweat trickled down his face and stung his eyes. The air seemed to be filled with dust that coated his throat and made him thirsty again. The light, reflecting from the shattered chalk of the broken walls, was dazzling. He was tired. He unstrung the bow to take the tension from the stave.

“Are we attacking again?” Sclate asked.

“I reckon we attack when the duke assaults the far side,” Hook suggested. “Be a couple of hours yet.”

“They’ll be ready for us,” Sclate said gloomily.

The garrison would be ready. Ready with cannons and crossbows and springolts and boiling oil. That was what waited for the men wearing the red cross. The men-at-arms were sitting now, resting before they were ordered into the killing ground. The bright banners hung slack from their poles and a strange silence wrapped Harfleur. Waiting. Waiting.

“When we attack!” Sir John’s voice broke the silence. He was striding along the front of the sheltering archers, careless that he was fully exposed to the enemy, but the French crossbowmen, doubtless under orders to conserve their bolts, ignored him. “When we attack,” he called again, “you advance! You keep shooting! But you keep going forward! When we go over the wall I want archers with us! We’re going to have to hunt these bastards through their goddam streets! I want you all there! And good hunting! This is a day to kill our king’s enemies, so kill them!”

And when the killing was done, Hook wondered, how many English would be left? The army that had sailed from Southampton Water had been small enough, but now? Now, he reckoned, there would just be half an army, many of them sick men, crammed into the ruins of Harfleur as the French army at last stirred itself to fight. Rumors said that enemy army was vast, a horde of men eager to wipe out the impudent English invaders, though God seemed to be doing that already by sickness.

“Let’s get it over with,” Will of the Dale grumbled.

“Or let them keep the goddam town,” Tom Scarlet suggested, “it’s a shit-heap now.”

And what if the assault failed? Hook wondered. What if Harfleur did not fall? Then the remnants of Henry’s army would sail back to England, defeated. The campaign had begun so well, with all the panoply of banners and hope, and now it was blood and feces and despair.

Another trumpeter began playing the same mocking notes from the city. Sir John, stalking back past his archers, turned and snarled toward the defenders. “I want that prick-sucking bastard killed! I want him killed!” The last four words were screamed at the wall, loud enough for any Frenchmen to hear.

Then, unexpectedly, a man clambered onto the wall’s top. He was not the trumpeter, who still blew from his place behind the wall. The man on the wall was unarmed, and he stood and waved both hands at the English.

Archers stood, began to draw.

“No!” Sir John bellowed. “No! No! No! Bows down! Bows down! Bows down!”

The trumpet note wavered, faded and stopped.

The man on the wall held his empty hands high above his head.

And, miraculously, suddenly, astonishingly, it was all over.

The soldiers of Harfleur’s garrison did not want to surrender, but the townspeople had suffered enough. They were hungry. Their houses had been crushed and burned by English missiles, disease was spreading, they saw an inevitable defeat and knew that vengeful enemies would rape their daughters. The town council insisted that the city yield and, without the support of the men of Harfleur who shot crossbows from the walls and without the food prepared by the women, the garrison could not prolong the fight.

The Sire de Gaucourt, who had led the defense, asked for a three-day truce in which he could send a messenger to the French king to discover whether or not a relief force was coming to the city’s help. If not, then he would surrender on condition that the English army did not sack and rape the town. Henry agreed, and so priests and nobles gathered at the breach by the Leure Gate, and the leading men came from the town, and they all swore solemn oaths to abide by the terms of the truce. Afterward, and after Henry had taken hostages to ensure that the garrison kept its word, a herald rode close under the walls and shouted up at the townsfolk who had watched the ceremony. He called in French. “You have nothing to fear! The King of England has not come to destroy you! We are good Christians and Harfleur is not Soissons! You have nothing to fear!”

Smoke drifted from the city to haze the late summer sky. It seemed strange that no guns fired, that no trebuchets thumped as they launched their missiles, and that the fighting had stopped. The dying did not stop. The corpses were still carried to the creeks and thrown to the gulls, and it seemed there would be no end to the sickness.

And there was no French relief force.

The French army was gathering to the east, but the message came back that it would not march to relieve Harfleur and so, on the next Sunday, the feast of Saint Vincent, the city surrendered.

A pavilion was erected on the hillside behind the English encampment and a throne was placed under the canopy and draped with cloth of gold. English banners flanked the pavilion, which was filled with the high nobility in their finest clothes. A man held aloft the king’s great helm, which was ringed with a golden crown, while archers lined a long path that led across the rubble of the siege-works to the ruined gate that had resisted so many attacks. Behind the archers were the rest of Henry’s army, spectators to the day’s drama.

The King of England, crowned with a simple circlet of gold and wearing a surcoat blazoned with the French royal coat of arms, sat enthroned in silence. He was watching and waiting, and perhaps wondering what he must do next. He had come to Normandy and won this surrender, but that victory had cost him half his army.

Hook was at the Leure Gate where Sir John commanded a force of ten men-at-arms and forty archers. Sir John, clad in plate armor that had been scoured to a shine, was mounted on his great destrier, Lucifer, who had been draped in a dazzling linen trapper resplendent with Sir John’s crest, and the same lion was modeled in painted wood to rear savagely from the crest of Sir John’s helmet. The men-at-arms were also in armor, but the archers were in leather jerkins and stained breeches. All the bowmen carried halters of rough rope, the kind that a peasant might use to lead a cow to market. “Treat them courteously,” Sir John told his bowmen, “they fought well! They’re men!”

“I thought they were all scum-sucking cabbage shitters,” Will of the Dale said quietly, but not quietly enough.

Sir John turned Lucifer. “They are that!” he said, “but they fought like Englishmen! So treat them like Englishmen!”

A section of the new wall had been demolished and, just after Sir John spoke, some three dozen men emerged from the gap. They had been ordered to approach the King of England barefoot and in plain linen shirts and hose. Now, nervous and apprehensive, they walked slowly and cautiously toward the waiting archers.

“Nooses!” Sir John ordered.

Hook and the other archers tied nooses in the ropes. Sir John beckoned a squire and handed his reins to the man, then slid out of his tall saddle. He patted Lucifer on the nose, then walked toward the approaching Frenchmen.

He singled out one man, a tall man with a hooked nose and a short black beard. The man was pale, and Hook guessed he was sick, but he was forcing himself to lead the Frenchmen out of the town and to keep what small dignity he had left. The bearded man beckoned to his companions to pause while he approached Sir John alone. The two men stopped a pace apart, the Englishman glorious in armor and heraldry, his sword hilt polished, his armor gleaming, while the Frenchman was in the common, ill-fitting clothes decreed by King Henry. Sir John, his visor raised, said something that Hook did not catch, then the two men embraced.

Sir John left his right arm about the Frenchman’s shoulders as he led him toward the archers. “This is the Sire de Gaucourt,” he announced, “the leader of our enemies these last five weeks, and he has fought bravely! He deserves better than this, but our king commands and we must obey. Hook, give me the noose!”

Hook held out the halter. The Frenchman gave him an appraising look and Hook felt compelled to nod his head in respectful acknowledgment.

“I am sorry,” Sir John said in French.

“It is necessary,” Raoul de Gaucourt said harshly.

“Is it?” Sir John asked.

“We must be humiliated so that the rest of France knows what fate waits for them if they resist your king,” de Gaucourt said. He gave a wan smile then cast an appraising eye over the English army that waited to watch his humiliating walk to the king’s throne. “Though I doubt your king has the power to frighten France any more,” he went on. “You call this a victory, Sir John?” he asked, beckoning at the battered walls he had defended so bravely. Sir John did not answer. Instead he lifted the noose to place it about de Gaucourt’s head, but the Frenchman took it from him. “Allow me,” he said, and put the rope about his own neck.

The other Frenchmen had ropes placed about their necks, and then Sir John, satisfied, pulled himself back into Lucifer’s saddle. He nodded to de Gaucourt, then spurred his horse along the path made between the watching English soldiers.

The Frenchmen walked the path in silence. Some, the merchants, were old men, while others, mostly soldiers, were young and strong. They were the knights and burgesses, the men who had defied the King of England, and the nooses about their necks proclaimed that their lives were now at Henry’s mercy. They climbed the hillside, then knelt humbly before the throne canopied in cloth of gold. Henry gazed at them a long time. The wind lifted the silk banners and drifted smoke from the city’s ruins. The assembled English nobles waited, expecting the king to announce the death sentence on the kneeling men. “I am the rightful king of this realm,” Henry said, “and your resistance was treason.”

A look of pain showed briefly on de Gaucourt’s face. He ignored the accusation of treason and instead held out a thick bunch of heavy keys. “The keys of Harfleur, sire,” he said, “which are yours.”

The king did not take the offered keys. “Your defiance,” he said sternly, “was contrary to man’s law and to God’s law.” Some of the older merchants were shaking in fear and one had tears running down his face. “But God,” Henry went on loftily, “is merciful.” He lifted the keys at last, “and we shall be merciful. Your lives are not forfeit.”

A cheer sounded from the English army when the cross of Saint George was hoisted over the town. Next day Henry of England walked barefoot to the church of Saint Martin to give thanks to God for a victory, yet many who watched his humble pilgrimage reckoned that his triumph was a virtual defeat. He had wasted so much time before Harfleur’s walls and the sickness had torn his army apart, and the campaign season was almost over.

The English army moved inside the walls. They burned their encampment and dragged catapults and cannon through the ruined gate. Sir John’s men quartered themselves in a row of houses, taverns, and warehouses beside the wall-enclosed harbor where Hook found space in the attic of a tavern called Le Paon. “Le paon is a bird,” Melisande had explained, “with a big tail!” She had spread her arms wide.

“No bird’s got a tail that big!” Hook said.

“Le paon does,” she insisted.

“Must be a French bird then,” Hook said, “not an English one.”

Harfleur was now English. The cross of Saint George flew from the ruined stump of Saint Martin’s tower, and the people of the city, who had suffered so much, were now given more suffering.

They were expelled. The city, the king declared, would be resettled by English people, just as Calais had been, and to make room for those new inhabitants over two thousand men, women, and children were driven from the city. The sick were taken in carts, the rest walked, and two hundred mounted Englishmen guarded the sad column’s progress along the north bank of the Seine. The English soldiers were there to protect the refugees from their own countrymen who would otherwise have robbed and raped. Men-at-arms led the procession and archers flanked it.

Hook was one of the archers. He had been reunited with his black gelding, Raker, who was fretful and needed constant curbing. Hook’s surcoat was washed clean, though the red cross of Saint George had faded to a dull pink. Beneath the surcoat he wore a coat of good mail that he had taken from a French corpse and an aventail that Sir John had given him, and over the aventail’s hood he now had a bascinet that was another gift from a corpse. The bascinet was a helmet with a wide brim designed to deflect a downward blade, though like other archers Hook had hacked off the brim on the right side to make a space for his bow’s cord when he drew it to the full. His sword hung at his side, his cased bow was slung across his shoulder, while his arrow bag hung from the saddle’s cantle. To his right, beyond the refugees, the narrowing river rippled sun-bright, while to the left were meadows stripped of livestock by English forage parties and, beyond those pastures, gentle wooded hills still heavy in their full summer leaf. Melisande had stayed in Harfleur, but Father Christopher had insisted on accompanying the refugees. He was mounted on Sir John’s great destrier, Lucifer. Sir John wanted the horse exercised, and Father Christopher was happy to oblige. “You shouldn’t have come, father,” Hook told him.

“You’re a doctor of medicine now, Hook?”

“You’re supposed to rest, father.”

“There’ll be rest enough in heaven,” Father Christopher said happily. He was still pale, but he was eating again. He was wearing a priest’s robe, something he had done more frequently since his recovery. “I learned something during that illness,” the priest said in apparent seriousness.

“Aye? What was that?”

“In heaven, Hook, there will be no shitting.”

Hook laughed. “But will there be women, father?”

“In abundance, young Hook, but what if they’re all good women?”

“You mean the bad ones will all be in the devil’s cellar, father?”

“That is a worry,” Father Christopher said with a smile, “but I trust God to make suitable arrangements.” He grinned, happy to be alive and riding under a September sun beside a hedge thick with blackberries. A corncrake’s grating cry echoed from the hills. Just after dawn, when the protesting refugees had been forced out of Harfleur, a stag had appeared on the Rouen road resplendent in his new antlers. Hook had taken it as a good omen, but Father Christopher, looking up at the dark branches of a dead elm tree, now found a gloomy one. “The swallows are gathering early,” he said.

“A bad winter then,” Hook said.

“It means summer’s end, Hook, and with it go our hopes. Like those swallows, we will disappear.”

“Back to England?”

“And to disappointment,” the priest said sadly. “The king has debts to pay, and he can’t pay them. If he had carried home a victory then it wouldn’t matter.”

“We won, father,” Hook said, “we captured Harfleur.”

“We used a pack of wolfhounds to kill a hare,” Father Christopher said, “and out there,” he nodded eastward, “there’s a much larger pack of hounds gathering.”

Some of that larger pack appeared at midday. The front of the long column of refugees had stopped in some meadows beside the river and now the tail of the column crowded in behind them. What had checked their progress was a band of enemy horsemen who barred the road where it led through the gate of a walled town. The townsfolk watched from the walls. The enemy had a single banner, a great white flag on which a red and double-headed eagle spread its long talons. The French men-at-arms were dressed for battle, their polished armor gleaming beneath bright surcoats, but few wore helmets and those who did had their visors raised, a clear sign that they expected no fighting. Hook guessed there were a hundred enemy and they were here under an arranged truce to receive the refugees, who were to be taken to Rouen in a fleet of barges that was moored on the river’s northern bank. “Dear God,” Father Christopher said, staring at the eagle banner, which lifted and fell in the wind that drove ripples across the river. “That’s the marshal,” Father Christopher explained, making the sign of the cross.

“The marshal?”

“Jean de Maingre, Lord of Boucicault, Marshal of France,” Father Christopher said the name and titles slowly, his voice betraying admiration for the man who wore the badge of the double-headed eagle.

“Never heard of him, father,” Hook said cheerfully.

“France is ruled by a madman,” the priest said, “and the royal dukes are young and headstrong, but our enemies do have the marshal, and the marshal is a man to fear.”

Sir William Porter, Sir John Cornewaille’s brother-in-arms, led the English contingent and he now rode bareheaded to greet the marshal who, in turn, spurred his destrier toward Sir William. The Frenchman, who was a big man on a tall horse, towered over the Englishman as the two spoke, and Hook, watching from a distance, thought they laughed together. Then, invited by a gesture from the courtly Sir William, the Marshal of France kicked his horse toward the English troops. He ignored the French civilians and instead rode slowly down the ragged line of men-at-arms and archers.

The marshal wore no helmet. His hair was dark brown, cut bluntly short and graying at the temples, and it framed a face of such ferocity that Hook was taken aback. It was a square, blunt face, scarred and broken, beaten by battle and by life, but undefeated. A hard face, a man’s face, a warrior’s face, with keen dark eyes that searched men and horses for clues to their condition. His mouth was set in a grim line, but suddenly smiled when he saw Father Christopher, and in the smile Hook saw a man who might inspire other men to great loyalty and victory. “A priest on a destrier!” the marshal said, amused. “We mount our priests on knackered mares, not on war chargers!”

“We English have so many destriers, sire,” Father Christopher answered, “that we can spare them for men of God.”

The marshal looked appraisingly at Lucifer. “A good horse,” he said, “whose is it?”

“Sir John Cornewaille’s,” the priest answered.

“Ah!” the marshal was pleased. “You will give the good Sir John my compliments! Tell him I am glad he has visited France and that I hope he will carry fond memories of it back to England. And that he will carry them very soon.” The marshal smiled at Father Christopher, then looked at Hook with apparent interest, taking in the archer’s weapons and armor, before holding out a steel-gauntleted hand. “Do me the honor,” he said, “and lend me your bow.”

Father Christopher translated for Hook who had understood anyway, but had not responded because he was not certain quite what he should do. “Let him have the bow, Hook,” Father Christopher said, “and string it first.”

Hook uncased the great stave, placed its lower end in his left stirrup, and looped the noose about the upper nock. He could feel the raw power in the tensed yew stave. It sometimes seemed to him that the wood came alive when he strung the bow. It seemed to quiver in anticipation. The marshal was still holding out his hand and Hook stretched the bow toward him.

“It is a large bow,” Boucicault said in very careful English.

“One of the largest I’ve seen,” Father Christopher said, “and it’s carried by a very strong archer.”

A dozen French men-at-arms had followed the marshal and they watched from a few paces away as he held the stave in his left hand and tentatively pulled on the string with his right. His eyebrows lifted in surprise at the effort it took, and he gave Hook an appreciative glance. He looked back to the bow, hesitated, then raised it as though there were an imaginary arrow on the string. He took a breath, then pulled.

English archers watched, half smiling, knowing that only a trained archer could pull such a bow to the full draw. The cord went back halfway and stopped, then Boucicault hauled again and the string kept going back, back until it had reached his mouth, and Hook could see the strain showing on the Frenchman’s face, but Boucicault was not finished. He gave a small grimace, pulled again, and the cord went all the way to his right ear, and he held it there at the full draw and looked at Hook with a raised eyebrow.

Hook could not help it. He laughed, and suddenly the English archers were cheering the French marshal, whose face showed pure delight as he slowly relaxed his grip and handed the bow back to Hook. Hook, grinning, took the stave and half bowed in his saddle. “Englishman,” Boucicault called, “here!” he tossed Hook a coin and, still smiling delightedly, rode on down the line of applauding archers.

“I told you,” Father Christopher said, smiling, “he’s a man.”

“A generous man,” Hook said, staring at the coin. It was gold, the size of a shilling, and he guessed it was worth a year’s wages. He pushed the gold into his pouch, which held spare arrowheads and three spare cords.

“A good and generous man,” Father Christopher agreed, “but not a man to be your enemy.”

“Nor am I,” a voice intruded, and Hook twisted in his saddle to see that one of the men-at-arms who had followed the marshal was the Sire de Lanferelle who now leaned on his saddle’s pommel to stare at Hook. He looked down at Hook’s missing finger and a suggestion of a smile showed on his face. “Are you my son-in-law yet?”

“No, sire,” Hook said and named Lanferelle to Father Christopher.

The Frenchman looked speculatively at the priest. “You’ve been ill, father.”

“I have,” Father Christopher agreed.

“Is this a judgment of God? Did He in His mercy strike your army as a punishment for your king’s wickedness?”

“Wickedness?” Father Christopher asked gently.

“In coming to France,” Lanferelle said, then straightened in his saddle. His hair was oiled so that it hung sleek, raven black and shining to his waist, which was encircled by a silver-plated sword belt. His face, so strikingly handsome, was even darker after a summer in the sun, making his eyes seem unnaturally bright. “Yet I hope you stay in France, father.”

“Is that an invitation?”

“It is!” Lanferelle smiled, showing very white teeth. “How many men do you have now?”

“We are counted as the grains of sand on the seashore,” the priest answered blithely, “and are as numerous as the multitudinous stars of the firmament, and are as many as the biting fleas in a French whore’s crotch.”

“And just about as dangerous,” Lanferelle said, unbitten by the priest’s defiant words. “You number what? Fewer than ten thousand now? And I hear your king is sending the sick men home?”

“He sends men home,” Father Christopher said, “because we have enough to do whatever must be done.”

Hook wondered how Lanferelle knew that the sick were being sent home, then supposed that French spies must be watching Harfleur from the surrounding hills and would have seen the litters being carried onto the English ships that could at last come right into the walled harbor.

“And your king brings in reinforcements,” Lanferelle said, “but how many of his men must he leave in Harfleur to protect its broken walls? A thousand?” He smiled again. “It is such a little army, father.”

“But at least it fights,” Father Christopher said, “whereas your army slumbers in Rouen.”

“But our army,” Lanferelle said, his voice suddenly harsh, truly does number as the fleas in a Parisian whore’s crotch.” He gathered his reins. “I do hope you stay, father, and come to where the fleas can feed on English blood.” He nodded to Hook. “Give Melisande my compliments. And give her something else.” He turned in his saddle. “Jean! Venez!” The same dull-faced squire who had gazed at Melisande in the woods above Harfleur spurred to his master and, on Lanferelle’s orders, fumbled his jupon over his head. The Sire de Lanferelle took the gaudy garment with its bright sun and proud falcon and folded it into a square that he threw at Hook. “If it comes to a battle,” he said, “tell Melisande to wear that. It might be sufficient to protect her. I would regret her death. Good day to you both.” And with that he rode on after the marshal.

Clouds gathered the next day, piling above the sea and slowly drifting to make a pall over Harfleur. The archers were busy making temporary repairs to the breached walls, building timber palisades that must serve as a defense until masons came from England to remake the ramparts properly. Men were still falling ill and the battered streets stank of sewage that oozed into the River L#233;zarde that once again ran free through a stone channel bisecting the town, and thence into the tight harbor that smelled like a cesspit.

The king sent a challenge to the dauphin, offering to fight him face-to-face and the winner would inherit the crown of France from the mad King Charles. “He won’t accept,” Sir John Cornewaille said. Sir John had come to watch the archers pound stakes into the ground to support the new palisade. “The dauphin’s a fat, lazy bastard, and our Henry is a warrior. It would be like a wolf fighting a piglet.”

“And if the dauphin doesn’t agree to fight, Sir John?” Thomas Evelgold asked.

“We’ll go home, I suppose,” Sir John said unhappily. That was the opinion throughout the army. The days were shortening and becoming colder, and soon the autumn rains would arrive and that would mean the end of the campaign season. And even if Henry had wanted to continue the campaign his army was too small and the French army was too big, and sensible men, experienced men, declared that only a fool would dare defy those odds. “If we had another six or seven thousand men,” Sir John said, “I dare say we could bloody their goddam noses, but we won’t. We’ll leave a garrison to hold this shit-hole and the rest of us will sail home.”

Reinforcements still arrived, but they were not many, not nearly enough to make up the numbers who had died or who were sick, but the boats brought them into the stinking harbor and the uncertain newcomers came down the gangplanks to stare wide-eyed at the broken roofs and the shattered churches and the scorched rubble. “Most of us will be going home soon,” Sir John told his men, “and the newcomers can defend Harfleur.” He spoke sourly. The capture of Harfleur was not enough to compensate for the money spent and the lives lost. Sir John wanted more, as rumor said the king did, but every other great lord, the royal dukes, the earls, the bishops, the captains, all advised the king to go home.

“There’s no choice,” Thomas Evelgold told Hook one evening. The great lords were at a council of war, meeting the king in an attempt to beat sense into his ambitious head, and the army waited on the council’s decision. It was a beautiful evening, a sinking sun casting shadows long over the harbor. Hook and Evelgold were sitting at a table outside Le Paon, drinking ale that had been brought from England because the breweries of Harfleur had all been destroyed. “We have to go home,” Evelgold said, evidently thinking of the heated discussion that was doubtless being waged in the guild hall beside Saint Martin’s church.

“Maybe we stay as part of the garrison?” Hook suggested.

“Christ, no!” Evelgold said harshly, then crossed himself. “That goddam great army of the French? They’ll take this town back with no trouble! They’ll beat down our palisades in three days, then kill every man here.”

Hook said nothing. He was watching the harbor’s narrow entrance where an arriving ship was being propelled by huge sweeps because the wind had fallen to a whisper. Gulls wheeled above the ship’s single mast and over her high, richly gilded castles. “The Holy Ghost,” Evelgold said, nodding at the ship.

The Holy Ghost was a new ship, built with the king’s money to support his invading army, but now she was chiefly employed in taking diseased men home to England. She crept closer and closer to the quay. Hook could see men on her deck, but they were not nearly as many as the ship had brought on her previous voyage and he guessed these might be the last reinforcements to arrive.

“Fifteen hundred ships brought us here,” Evelgold said, “but we won’t need that many to take us home.” He laughed bitterly. “What a waste of a goddamned summer.” The sun glinted reflections from the gilding on the Holy Ghost’s two castles. The passengers on board stared at the shore. “Welcome to Normandy,” Evelgold said. “Will your woman go back to England?”

“She will.”

“Thought you were getting married?”

“I think we are.”

“Do it in England, Hook.”

“Why England?”

“Because it’s God’s country, not like this goddam place.”

Centenars and men-at-arms had come to the quay to discover if any of the newcomers belonged to their companies. Lord Slayton’s centenar, William Snoball, was one of them, and he greeted Hook civilly. “I’m surprised to see you here, Master Snoball,” Hook said.

“Why?”

“Who’s stewarding while you’re here?”

“John Willetts. He can manage well enough without me. And his lordship wanted me to come.”

“Because you’ve got experience,” Evelgold put in.

“Aye there’s that,” Snoball agreed, “and his lordship wanted me to keep an eye on,” he hesitated, “well, you know.”

“Sir Martin?” Hook asked. “And why in God’s name did he send him?”

“Why do you think?” Snoball answered harshly.

Hook mimed drawing a knife across his throat. “Is that what he hopes?”

“He hopes Sir Martin will minister to our souls,” Snoball said distantly and then, perhaps thinking he had betrayed too much, walked some distance down the wharf.

Hook watched the Holy Ghost creep closer. “Are we expecting any new men?” he asked.

“None that I know of, Sir John hasn’t said anything.”

“He’s not happy,” Hook said.

“Because he’s crazy, moon-touched. Daft as a hare.” Thomas Evelgold brooded for a moment. “He wants to march into France! Man’s daft! He wants us all dead! But it’s all right for him, isn’t it?”

“All right?”

“He won’t be killed, will he? What happens if we march into France to find a battle? The gentry don’t get killed, Hook, they get taken prisoner! But no one will ransom you and me. We get slaughtered, Hook, while their lordships go off to some comfortable castle and get fed and given whores. Sir John don’t care. He just wants a fight! But he knows he’ll like as not live through a battle. He should give a thought to us.” Evelgold drained his ale. “Still, won’t happen. We’ll all be home by Saint Martin’s feast day.”

“The king wants to march,” Hook said.

“The king can count as well as you and me,” Evelgold said dismissively, “and he won’t march.”

Lines were hurled from the Holy Ghost to be caught by men ashore, and slowly, laboriously, the great ship was hauled in to the quay. Gangplanks were lowered and then the newcomers, looking unnaturally clean, were chivvied ashore. There were around sixty archers, all carrying cased bows, arrow bags, and bundles. The red crosses of Saint George on their jupons looked very bright. A priest came down the nearer gangplank, fell to his knees on the wharf, and made the sign of the cross. Behind him were four archers wearing the Slayton moon and stars and one of them had springy gold hair sticking wildly from beneath his helmet’s brim. For a heartbeat Hook did not believe what he saw, then he stood and shouted. “Michael! Michael!”

It was his younger brother. Michael saw him and grinned. “My brother,” Hook explained to Evelgold, then strode to meet Michael. They embraced. “My God, it is you,” Hook said.

William Snoball called Michael’s name, but Hook turned on the steward. “He’ll come when he’s ready, Master Snoball. Where are you quartered?”

Snoball grudgingly told him and Hook promised to bring his brother, then took Michael to the table and poured a pot of ale. Thomas Evelgold left them alone. “What in God’s name are you doing here?” Hook demanded.

“Lord Slayton sent his last archers,” Michael said, grinning, “he reckoned you all needed help. I didn’t even know you were here!”

Then there was a catching up of news. Hook said that Robert Perrill had been killed in the siege, though he did not say how, and Michael told how their grandmother had died, a fact that did not trouble Hook in the least. “She was a bitter old bitch,” he said.

“She looked after us, though,” Michael said.

“She looked after you, not me.”

Then Melisande came from the tavern and she was introduced, and Hook felt a sudden, wild and unfamiliar happiness. The two people he loved most were with him, and he had money in his pockets, and all seemed well with the world. The campaign in France might be over, and over before it had gained any great victory, but he was still happy. “I’ll ask Sir John if you can join us,” he told Michael.

“I don’t think Lord Slayton will allow that,” Michael said.

“Aye, well, we can only ask.”

“So what’s going to happen here?” Michael wanted to know.

“I reckon some poor bastards will be left here to defend this town,” Hook said, “and the rest of us will go home.”

“Go home?” Michael frowned. “But we just got here!”

“That’s what folk are saying. The lords are trying to make the decision now, but it’s too late in the year to go marching inland and, besides, the French army’s too big. We’ll be going home.”

“I hope not,” Michael said. He grinned. “I didn’t come this far to go home again. I want to fight.”

“No, you don’t,” Hook said, and surprised himself by saying it. Melisande was also surprised, looking at him curiously.

“I don’t?”

“It’s blood,” Hook said, “and men crying for their mothers, and too much screaming, and pain and bastards in metal trying to kill you.”

Michael was taken aback. “They say we just shoot arrows at them,” he said falteringly.

“Aye, you do, but in the end, brother, you have to get close. Close enough to see their eyes. Close enough to kill them.”

“And Nicholas is good at that,” Melisande said flatly.

“Not every man is,” Hook said, suspecting that Michael, with his generous and trusting nature, lacked the ruthlessness to get close and commit slaughter.

“Maybe just one battle,” Michael said wistfully, “not a very big one.”

Hook took Michael through the town at sundown. Lord Slayton’s men had found houses close to the Montivilliers Gate and Hook led his brother there and so into the yard of a merchant’s house where the archers were quartered. His old companions went silent as the Hook brothers appeared. There was no sign of Sir Martin, but Tom Perrill, dark and brooding, was sitting against a wall, and he stared expressionless at the two Hooks. William Snoball sensed trouble and stood up.

“Michael’s joining you,” Hook announced loudly, “and Sir John Cornewaille wants you to know that my brother is under his protection.” Sir John had said no such thing, but none of Lord Slayton’s men would know that.

Tom Perrill gave a mocking laugh, but said nothing. William Snoball confronted Hook. “There’ll be no trouble,” he agreed.

“There will indeed be no trouble!” A voice echoed the statement and Hook turned to see Sir Edward Derwent, Lord Slayton’s captain who had been captured in the mine, standing in the courtyard entrance. Sir Edward had been freed when the town surrendered, and Hook reckoned he must have been at the council of war because he was dressed in his finest clothes. Sir Edward now strode to the courtyard’s center. “There will be no trouble!” he said again. “None of you will fight each other, because your job is to fight the French!”

“I thought we were going home,” Snoball said, puzzled.

“Well, you’re not,” Sir Edward said. “The king wants more, and what the king wants, he gets.”

“We’re staying here?” Hook asked, incredulous. “In Harfleur?”

“No, Hook,” Sir Edward said, “we’re marching.” He sounded grim, as though he disapproved of the decision. But Henry was king and, as Sir Edward had said, what the king wanted the king got.

And what Henry wanted was more war.

And so the army would march into France.