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

_{PART THREE} To the River of Swords

NINE

There were to be no heavy wagons taken on the march. Instead the baggage would be carried by men, packhorses, and light carts. “We have to travel fast,” Sir John explained.

“It’s pride,” Father Christopher told Hook later, “nothing but pride.”

“Pride?”

“The king can’t just crawl back to England with nothing but Harfleur to show for his money! He has to do more than merely kick the French dog, he feels a need to pull its tail as well.”

The French dog did appear to be sleeping. Reports said the enemy army grew ever larger, but it showed no sign of stirring from around Rouen, and so the King of England had decided he would show Christendom that he could march from Harfleur to Calais with impunity. “It isn’t that far,” Sir John told his men, “maybe a week’s march.”

“And what do we gain from a week’s march through France?” Hook asked Father Christopher.

“Nothing,” the priest said bluntly.

“So why do it?”

“To show that we can. To show that the French are helpless.”

“And we travel without the big wagons?”

Father Christopher grinned. “We don’t want the helpless French to catch us, do we? That would be a disaster, young Hook! So we can’t take two hundred heavy wains with us, that would slow us down far too much, so it will be horses, spurs and the devil take the hindmost.”

“This is important!” Sir John had told his men. He had stormed into the Paon’s taproom and hammered one of the barrels with the hilt of his sword. “Are you awake? Are you listening? You take food for eight days! And all the arrows you can carry! You take weapons, armor, arrows, and food, and nothing else! If I see any man carrying anything other than weapons, armor, arrows, and food I’ll shove that useless baggage down his goddam gullet and pull it out of his goddam arse! We have to travel fast!”

“It all happened before,” Father Christopher told Hook next morning.

“Before?”

“You don’t know your history, Hook?”

“I know my grandfather was murdered, and my father too.”

“I do so love a happy family,” the priest said, “but think back to your great-grandfather’s time, when Edward was king. The third Edward. He was here in Normandy and decided to make a quick march to Calais, only he got trapped halfway.”

“And died?”

“Oh, good God, no, he beat the French! You’ve surely heard of Cr#233;cy?”

“Oh, I’ve heard of Cr#233;cy!” Hook said. Every archer knew of Cr#233;cy, the battle where the bowmen of England had cut down the nobility of France.

“So you know it was a glorious battle, Hook, in which God favored the English, but God’s favor is a fickle thing.”

“Are you telling me He’s not on our side?”

“I’m telling you that God is on the side of whoever wins, Hook.”

Hook considered that for a moment. He was sharpening arrowheads, slithering the bodkins and broadheads against a stone. He thought of all the tales he had heard as a child when old men had spoken of the arrow-storms of Cr#233;cy and Poitiers, then flourished a bodkin at Father Christopher. “If we meet the French,” he said stoutly, “we’ll win. We’ll punch these through their armor, father.”

“I have a grievous suspicion that the king agrees with you,” the priest said gently. “He really does believe God is on his side, but his brother evidently does not.”

“Which brother?” Hook asked. The Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Gloucester were both with the army.

“Clarence,” Father Christopher said. “He’s sailing home.”

Hook frowned at that news. The duke, according to some men, was an even better soldier than his older brother. Hook inspected a bodkin. Most of the long narrow head was dark with rust, but the point was now shining metal and wickedly sharp. He tested it by pricking the ball of his hand, then wet his fingers and smoothed out the fledging. “Why’s he going?”

“I suspect he disapproves of his brother’s decision,” Father Christopher said blandly. “Officially, of course, the duke is ill, but he looked remarkably well for an ailing man. And, of course, if Henry is killed, God forbid, Clarence will become King Thomas.”

“Our Harry won’t die,” Hook said fiercely.

“He very well might if the French catch us,” the priest said tartly, “but even our Henry has listened to advice. He was told to go home, he wanted to march to Paris, but he’s settled for Calais instead. And with God’s help, Hook, we should reach Calais long before the French can reach us.”

“You make it sound as if we’re running away.”

“Not quite,” the priest said, “but almost. Think of your lovely Melisande.”

Hook frowned, puzzled. “Melisande?”

“The French are gathered at her bellybutton, Hook, and we are perched on her right nipple. What we plan to do is run to her left nipple and hope to God the French don’t make it to her cleavage before us.”

“And if they do?”

“Then the cleavage will become the valley of the shadow of death,” Father Christopher said, “so pray that we march fast and that the French go on sleeping.”

“You can’t be fussy!” Sir John had told his archers in the taproom. “We can’t pack arrows in barrels, we don’t have the carts to carry barrels! And you can’t use discs! So bundle them, bundle them tight!”

Bundled arrows suffered from crushed fledgings, and crushed fledgings made arrows inaccurate, but there was no choice but to bind the arrows in tight sheaves that could be hung from a saddle or across a packhorse’s back. It took two days to tie the sheaves, for the king was demanding that every available arrow be carried on the journey and that meant carrying hundreds of thousands of arrows. As many as possible were heaped on the light farm carts that would accompany the army, but there were not enough such vehicles, so even men-at-arms were ordered to tie the bundles behind their saddles. There were just five thousand archers marching to Calais and in one minute those men were capable of shooting sixty or seventy thousand arrows, and no battle was ever won in a minute. “If we take every arrow we’ve got, there still won’t be enough,” Thomas Evelgold grumbled, “and then we’ll be throwing rocks at the bastards.”

A garrison was left at Harfleur. It was a strong force of over three hundred men-at-arms and almost a thousand archers, though it was short of horses because the king demanded that the garrison give up every beast except the knights’ war-trained destriers. The horses were needed to carry arrows. The new defenders of Harfleur were left perilously short of arrows themselves, but new ones were expected to arrive any day from England where foresters cut ash shafts, blacksmiths forged bodkins and broadheads, and fledgers bound on the goose feathers.

“We will march swiftly!” a priest with a booming voice shouted. It was the day before the army marched and the priest was visiting every street in Harfleur with a parchment on which the king’s orders had been written. The priest’s job was to make certain every man understood the king’s commands. “There will be no straggling! Above all, the property of the church is sacred! Any man who plunders church property will be hanged! God is with us, and we march to show that by His grace we are the masters of France!”

“You heard him!” Sir John shouted as the priest walked on. “Keep your thieving hands off church property! Don’t rape nuns! God doesn’t like it, and nor do I!”

That night, in the church of Saint Martin, Father Christopher made Hook and Melisande man and wife. Melisande cried and Hook, as he knelt and gazed at the candles guttering on the altar, wished Saint Crispinian would speak to him, but the saint said nothing. He wished he had thought to summon his brother to the church, but there had been no opportunity. Father Christopher had simply insisted that it was time Hook made Melisande his wife and so had taken them to the broken-spired church. “God be with you,” the priest said when the brief ceremony was done.

“He has been,” Melisande said.

“Then pray that He stays with you, because we need God’s help now.” The priest turned and bowed to the altar. “By God we need it,” he added ominously, “the Burgundians have marched.”

“To help us?” Hook asked. It seemed so long ago that he had worn the ragged red cross of Burgundy and watched as the troops of France had massacred a city.

“No,” Father Christopher said, “to help France.”

“But…” Hook began, then his voice trailed away.

“They have made up their family quarrel,” Father Christopher said, “and so turned against us.”

“And we’re still going to march?” Hook asked.

“The king insists,” Father Christopher said bleakly. “We are a small army at the edge of a great land,” he went on, “but at least you two are joined now for all time. Even death cannot separate you.”

“Thanks be to God,” Melisande said, and made the sign of the cross.

Next day, the eighth day of October, a Tuesday, the feast day of Saint Benedicta, under a clear sky, the army marched.

They went north, following the coastline, and Hook felt the army’s spirits rise as they rode away from the smell of shit and death. Men grinned for no apparent reason, friends teased each other cheerfully, and some put spurs to horses and just galloped for the sheer joy of being in open country again.

Sir John Cornewaille commanded the army’s vanguard, and his own men were in the van of the van and so rode at the very front of the column. Sir John’s banner flew between the cross of Saint George and the flag of the Holy Trinity, the three standards guarded by Sir John’s men-at-arms and followed by four mounted drummers who beat incessantly. The archers rode ahead, scouting the path, and watching for an enemy whose first appearance was an ambush, though none of Sir John’s men was involved. The French had waited until the well-armed and vigilant vanguard had gone by, then had sallied from Montivilliers, a walled town close to the road. Crossbowmen shot from the woods and a group of men-at-arms charged the column and there was a flurry of fighting before the attackers, who numbered fewer than fifty men, were beaten off, though not before they had managed to take a half-dozen prisoners and leave two English dead.

That skirmish occurred on the first day, but thereafter the French seemed to fall back into sleep and so the English men-at-arms rode unarmored, their mail and plate carried by the sumpter horses. The riders’ different colored jerkins gave the mounted column a holiday appearance, enhanced by the banners flying at the head of every contingent. The women, pages and, servants rode behind the men-at-arms, leading packhorses loaded with armor, food, and the great bundles of arrows. Sir John’s company had two light carts, one loaded with food and plate armor, the other heaped with arrows. When Hook turned in his saddle he saw a filmy cloud of dust pluming over the low hills and heavy woods. The dust marked the trail of England’s army as it twisted through the small valleys leading toward the River Somme, and to Hook it appeared to be a large army, but in truth it was a defiant band of fewer than ten thousand men, and only looked larger because there were over twenty thousand horses.

On the Sunday they dropped out of the small, tight hills into a more open and flatter countryside. Sir John had suggested that this was the day they should reach the Somme, and had added that the Somme was the only major obstacle on their journey. Cross that river and they would have a mere three days’ marching to Calais. “So there won’t be a battle?” Michael Hook asked his brother. Lord Slayton’s men were also in the vanguard, though Sir Martin and Thomas Perrill stayed well clear of Sir John and his men.

“They say no,” Hook said, “but who knows?”

“The French won’t stop us?”

“They don’t seem to be trying, do they?” Hook said, nodding at the empty country ahead. He and the rest of Sir John’s archers were a half-mile in front of the column, leading the way to the river. “Maybe the French are happy to see us go?” he suggested. “They’re just leaving us be, perhaps?”

“You’ve been to Calais,” Michael said, impressed that his elder brother had traveled so far and seen so much since last they were together.

“Strange little town, it is,” Hook said, “a vast wall and a great castle and a huddle of houses. But it’s the way home, Michael, the way home!”

“I just got here,” Michael said ruefully.

“Maybe we’ll come back next year,” Hook said, “and finish the job. Look!” He pointed far ahead to where, in the smudges of brown, golden and yellow leaves, a sheen of light glittered. “That might be the river.”

“Or a lake,” Michael suggested.

“We’re looking for a place called Blanchetaque,” Hook said.

“They have the funniest names,” Michael said, grinning.

“There’s a ford at Blanchetaque,” Hook said. “We cross that and we’re as good as home.”

He turned as hooves sounded loud behind and saw Sir John and a half-dozen men-at-arms galloping toward him. Sir John, bareheaded and wearing mail, slowed Lucifer. He was looking off to the left where the sea showed beyond a low ridge. “See that, Hook?” he asked cheerfully.

“Sir John?”

Sir John pointed to a tiny white lump on the sea’s horizon. “Gris-Nez! The Gray Nose, Hook.”

“What’s that, Sir John?”

“A headland, Hook, just a half-day’s ride from Calais! See how close we are?”

“Three days’ ride?” Hook asked.

“Two days on a horse like Lucifer,” Sir John said, smoothing the destrier’s mane. He turned to look at the nearer countryside. “Is that the river?”

“I think so, Sir John.”

“Then Blanchetaque can’t be far! That’s where the third Edward crossed the Somme on his way to Cr#233;cy! Maybe your great-grandfather was with him, Hook.”

“He was a shepherd, Sir John, never drew a bow in his life.”

“He used a sling,” Michael said, sounding nervous because he spoke to Sir John.

“Like David and Goliath, eh?” Sir John said, still gazing at the distant headland. “I hear you got church married, Hook!”

“Yes, Sir John.”

“Women do like that,” Sir John said, sounding gloomy, “and we like women!” He cheered up. “She’s a good girl, Hook.” He stared at the land ahead. “Not a goddam Frenchman in sight.”

“There’s a horseman down there,” Michael said very diffidently.

“There’s a what?” Sir John snapped.

“Down there,” Michael said, pointing to a stand of trees a mile ahead, “a horseman, sir.”

Sir John stared and saw nothing, but Hook could now see the man who was motionless on his horse in the deep shade of the full-leafed wood. “He’s there, Sir John,” Hook confirmed.

“Bastard’s watching us. Can you flush him out, Hook? He might know whether the goddam French are guarding the ford. Don’t chase him away, I want him driven to us.”

Hook looked at the land to his right, searching for the dead ground that would let him circle behind the horseman unseen. “I reckon so, Sir John,” he said.

“Do it, man.”

Hook took his brother, Scoyle the Londoner, and Tom Scarlet, and he rode away from the half-hidden horseman, going back toward the approaching army and then down a slight incline that took him from the man’s sight. After that he turned east off the road and kicked Raker’s flanks to gallop across a stretch of grassland. They were still hidden from their quarry. Ahead of the four horsemen were copses and thickets. The fields here had no hedges, only ditches, and the horses jumped them easily. The land was nearly flat, but had just enough swell and dip to hide the four archers as Hook turned north again. Off to his right a man was plowing a field. His two oxen were struggling to drag the big plow that was set low because winter wheat was always sown deeper. “He needs some rain!” Michael shouted.

“It would help!” Hook answered.

The horses thumped up an almost imperceptible rise and the landscape that Hook had held in his head revealed itself. He did not turn to the wood where the horseman was hidden, but kept going northward to cut the man off from the Somme. Perhaps the man had already ridden away? In all likelihood he was simply some local gentleman who wanted to watch the enemy pass, but the gentry knew more of what happened in their neighboring regions than the peasantry and that was why Sir John wanted to question the man.

Raker was tiring, blowing and fractious, and Hook curbed the horse. “Bows,” he said, uncasing his own and stringing it by supporting one end in his bucket stirrup.

“Thought we weren’t supposed to kill him,” Tom Scarlet said.

“If the bastard’s a gentleman,” Hook said, and he supposed the man was because he was mounted on horseback, “then he’ll be sword trained. If you come at him with a blade he’ll like as not slash your head off. But he won’t like facing an arrow, will he?” He locked an arrow on the stave with his left thumb.

He patted Raker’s neck, then kicked the horse forward again. Now they were coming at the wood from the road’s far side. He could see that Sir John had stayed on the slight crest, not wanting to spring the man out of his hiding place, but the lone Frenchman had scented trouble, or else he had simply watched for the approaching English long enough, because he suddenly broke cover and spurred his horse north toward the river. “God damn him,” Hook said.

Sir John saw the man ride away and immediately spurred forward with his men-at-arms, but the English horses were tired and the Frenchman’s mount was well rested. “They’ve no chance of catching him,” Scoyle said.

Hook ignored that pessimism. Instead he turned Raker and banged his heels back. The Frenchman was following the road that curved to the right and Hook could gallop across the chord of that curve. He knew he could not out-gallop the man and so stood no chance of catching him, but he did have a chance of getting close enough to use the bow. The man turned in his saddle and saw Hook and his men and slashed his spurs back, and Hook kicked as well and the hooves hammered the hard ground and Hook saw that the fugitive would be hidden by trees in a moment and so he hauled on Raker’s reins, pulled his feet from the stirrups, and threw himself out of the saddle. He stumbled, fell to one knee, and the bow was already rising in his left hand and he caught the string, nocked the arrow and pulled back.

“Too far,” Scoyle said, reining in his horse, “don’t waste a good arrow.”

“Much too far,” Michael agreed.

But the bow was huge and Hook did not think about his aim. He just watched the distant horseman, willed where he wanted the arrow to go, then hauled and released and the cord twanged and slashed against his unprotected wrist and the arrow fluttered a heartbeat before its fledging caught the air and tautened its flight.

“Tuppence says you’ll miss by twenty paces,” Tom Scarlet said.

The arrow drew its curve in the sky, its white fledging a diminishing flicker in the autumn light. The far horseman galloped, unaware of the broadhead that flew high before starting its hissing descent. It fell fast, plunging, losing its momentum, and the horseman turned again to watch for his pursuers and as he did so the barbed arrow slapped into his horse’s belly and sliced into blood and flesh. The horse twisted hard and sudden with the awful pain and Hook saw the man lose his balance and fall from the saddle.

“Sweet Jesu!” Michael said in pure admiration.

“Come on!” Hook gathered Raker’s reins and hauled himself into the saddle and kicked back before he had found the stirrups and for a moment he thought he would fall off himself, but he managed to thrust his right boot into the bucket and saw the Frenchman was remounting his horse. Hook had wounded the horse, not killed it, but the animal was bleeding because the broadhead was designed to rip and tear through flesh, and the harder the Frenchman rode the beast the more blood it would lose.

The horseman spurred his wounded mount to vanish among the trees and a moment later Hook was on the road and among the same trees and he saw the Frenchman was a hundred paces ahead and his horse was faltering, leaving a trail of blood. The man saw his pursuers and slid out of his saddle because his horse could go no farther. He turned to run into the woods and Hook shouted, “Non!”

He let Raker slow to a stop. Hook’s bow was drawn and there was another arrow on the string, and this arrow was aimed at the horseman who gave a resigned nod. He wore a sword, but no armor. His clothes, as Hook drew nearer, looked to be of fine quality; good broadcloth and a tight-woven linen shirt and expensive boots. He was a fine-looking man, perhaps thirty years old, with a wide face and a trimmed beard and pale green eyes that were fixed on the arrow’s head. “Just stay where you are,” Hook said. The man might not speak English, but he understood the message of the tensioned bow and its bodkin arrow, and so he obeyed, caressing the nose of his dying horse. The horse gave a pathetic whinny, then its forelegs crumpled and it fell onto the track. The man crouched and stroked, speaking softly to the dying beast.

“You almost let him get away, Hook!” Sir John shouted as he arrived.

“Nearly, Sir John.”

“So let’s see what the bastard knows,” Sir John said, and slid out of his saddle. “Someone kill that poor horse!” he demanded. “Put the animal out of its misery!”

The job was done with a poleax blow to the horse’s forehead, then Sir John talked with the prisoner. He treated the man with an exquisite politeness, and the Frenchman, in turn, was loquacious, but there was no denying that whatever he revealed was causing Sir John dismay. “I want a horse for Sir Jules,” Sir John turned on the archers with that demand. “He’s going to meet the king.”

Sir Jules was taken to the king and the army stopped.

The vanguard was only five miles from the ford at Blanchetaque, and Calais was just three days’ march north of that ford. In three days’ time, eight days after they had left Harfleur, the army should have marched through the gates of Calais and Henry would have been able to claim, if not a victory, at least a humiliation of the French. But that humiliation depended on crossing the wide tidal ford of Blanchetaque.

And the French were already there. Charles d’Albret, the Constable of France, was on the Somme’s northern bank, and the prisoner, who was in the constable’s service, described how the ford had been planted with sharpened stakes, and how six thousand men were waiting on the further bank to stop the English crossing.

“It can’t be done,” Sir John said bleakly that evening. “The bastards are there.”

The bastards had blocked the river and, as night fell, the clouded sky reflected the campfires of the French force that guarded the Blanchetaque ford. “The ford’s only crossable when the tide’s low,” Sir John explained, “and even then we can only advance twenty men abreast. And twenty men can’t fight off six thousand.”

No one spoke for a while, then Father Christopher asked the question that every man in Sir John’s company wanted to ask even though they dreaded the answer. “So what do we do, Sir John?”

“Find another ford, of course.”

“Where, pray?”

“Inland,” Sir John said grimly.

“We march toward the belly button,” Father Christopher said.

“We do what?” Sir John asked, staring as though the priest were mad.

“Nothing, Sir John, nothing!” Father Christopher said.

So now England’s army, with only enough food for three more days, must march deep into France to cross a river. And if they could not cross the river they would die, and if they did cross the river they might still die because going inland would take time, and time would give the French army the opportunity to wake from its slumber and march. The dash up the coast had failed and now Henry and his little army must plunge into France.

And next morning, under a heavy gray sky, they headed east.

Hope had sustained the army, but now despair crept in. Disease returned. Men were forever dismounting, running to one side and dropping their breeches so that the rearguard rode through the stink of shit. Men rode silently and sullenly. Rain came in bands from the ocean, sweeping inland, leaving the column wet and dripping.

Every ford across the Somme was staked and guarded. The bridges had been destroyed, and a French army now shadowed the English. It was not the main army, not the great assembly of men-at-arms and crossbowmen that had gathered in Rouen, but a smaller force that was more than adequate to block any attempted crossing of a barricaded ford. They were in sight every day, men-at-arms and crossbowmen, all of them mounted, riding along the river’s northern bank to keep pace with the English on the southern. More than once Sir John led archers and men-at-arms in a headlong gallop to try and seize a ford before the French reached it, but the French were always waiting. They had put garrisons at every crossing.

Food became scarce, though the small unwalled towns grudgingly yielded baskets of bread, cheese, and smoked fish rather than be attacked and burned. And each day the army became hungrier and marched deeper into enemy country.

“Why don’t we just go back to Harfleur?” Thomas Evelgold grumbled.

“Because that would be running away,” Hook said.

“That’s better than dying,” Evelgold said.

There were also enemies on the English side of the river. French men-at-arms watched the passing column from low hilltops to the south. They were usually in small bands, perhaps six or seven men, and if a force of English knights rode toward them they would invariably draw away, though once in a while an enemy might raise his lance as a signal that he was offering single combat. Then, perhaps, an Englishman would respond and the two men would gallop together, there would be a clatter of iron-shod lances on armor and one man would topple slowly from his horse. Once two men skewered each other and both died, each impaled on his enemy’s lance. Sometimes a band of French would charge together, as many as forty or fifty men-at-arms, attacking a weak point in the marching column to kill a few men before galloping away.

Other Frenchmen were busy ahead of the column, taking away the harvest to leave nothing for the invaders. The food, collected from barns and granaries, was taken to Amiens, a city the English skirted on the day they should have arrived in Calais. The bags that had held food were now empty. Hook, riding in a thin drizzle, had stared at the distant white vision of Amiens Cathedral towering above the city and he had thought of all the food inside the walls. He was hungry. They were all hungry.

Next day they camped near a castle that stood atop a white chalk cliff. Sir John’s men-at-arms had captured a pair of enemy knights who had strayed too close to the vanguard and the prisoners had boasted how the French would defeat Henry’s small army. They had even repeated the boasts to Henry himself, and Sir John brought his archers orders from the king. He stood amidst their campfires. “Tomorrow morning,” he said, “every man is to cut a stake as long as a bowstave. Longer if you can! Cut a stake as thick as your arm and sharpen both ends.”

Rain hissed in the fire. Hook’s archers had eaten poorly on a hare that Tom Scarlet had killed with an arrow and that Melisande had roasted over the fire, which was surrounded by flat stones on which she had made flat cakes from a mix of oats and acorns. They had a few nuts and some hard green apples. There was no ale left, no wine either, so they took water from a stream. Melisande was now swathed in Hook’s enormous mail coat and huddled beside him.

“Stakes?” Thomas Evelgold inquired cautiously.

“The French, may they rot in hell,” Sir John said as he walked closer to the biggest fire, “have decided how to beat you. You! The archers! They fear you! Are you all listening to me?”

The archers watched him in silence. Sir John was wearing a leather hat and a thick leather coat. Rainwater dripped from the brim and hems. He carried a shortened lance, one cut down so that a man-at-arms could use it on foot. “We’re listening, Sir John,” Evelgold growled.

“Instructions have been sent from Rouen!” Sir John announced. “The Marshal of France has a plan! And the plan is to kill you, the archers, first, then kill the rest of us.”

“Take the gentry prisoner, you mean,” Evelgold said, but too quietly for Sir John to hear.

“They’re assembling knights on well-armored horses,” Sir John said, “and the riders will have the best armor they can find! Milanese armor! And you all know about Milanese armor.”

Hook knew that the armor made in Milan, wherever that was, had the reputation of being the best in Christendom. It was said that Milanese plate would resist the heaviest bodkin, but luckily such armor was rare because it was so expensive. Hook had been told that a complete suit of Milanese plate would cost close to a hundred pounds, over ten years’ pay for an archer, and a heavy outlay for most men-at-arms, who thought themselves rich if they had forty pounds a year.

“So they’ll armor their horses and wear Milanese plate,” Sir John went on, “and charge you, the archers! They want to get in among you with swords and maces.” The archers were listening intently now, imagining the big horses with steel faces and padded flanks wheeling and rearing among their panicked ranks. “If they send a thousand horsemen you’ll be lucky to stop a hundred of them! And the rest will just slaughter you, except they won’t, because you’ll have stakes!” He lifted the shortened lance to show what he meant, then thrust its butt end onto the leaf mold and slanted the shaft so that the iron-tipped point was about breast height. “That’s how you’ll drive the stake into the ground,” he told them. “If a horse charges home onto that it’ll get impaled, and that’s how you stop a man in Milanese armor! So tomorrow morning you all cut a stake. One man, one stake, and you sharpen both ends.”

“Tomorrow, Sir John?” Evelgold asked. He sounded skeptical. “Are they that close?”

“They could be anywhere,” Sir John said. “From tomorrow’s dawn you ride in mail and leather, you wear helmets, you keep your strings dry, and you carry a stake.”

Next morning Hook cut a bough from an oak and sharpened the green wood with his poleax blade. “When we left England,” Will of the Dale said ruefully, “they said we were the best army ever gathered! Now we’re down to wet strings, acorn cakes, and stakes! Goddamned stakes!”

The long oak stake was awkward to carry on horseback. The horses were tired, wet, and hungry, and the rain came again, harder, blowing from behind and pattering the river’s surface into a myriad dimples. The French were on the far bank. They were always on the far bank.

Then new orders came from the king and the vanguard turned away from the river to climb a long damp slope that led to a wide plateau of wet, featureless land. “Where are we going now?” Hook asked as the river disappeared from sight.

“God knows,” Father Christopher said.

“And He’s not telling you, father?”

“Does your saint tell you anything?”

“Not a word.”

“So God alone knows where we are,” Father Christopher said, “but only God.” The plateau had clay soil and the road was soon churned into a morass of mud on which the rain fell incessantly. It was growing colder, and the plateau had few trees, which meant fuel for fires was scarce. Some archers in another company burned their sharpened stakes for warmth at night and the army paused to watch those men being whipped. Their ventenar had his ears cut off.

The French horsemen sensed the despair in Henry’s army. They rode just to the south, tracking the army, and the English men-at-arms were too tired and their horses too hungry to accept the implied challenge of the raised lances, and so the French grew bolder, riding ever closer. “Don’t waste your arrows!” Sir John told his archers.

“One less Frenchman to kill in a battle,” Hook suggested.

Sir John smiled tiredly. “It’s a matter of honor, Hook.” He nodded toward a Frenchman who trotted less than a quarter-mile away. The man was quite alone and rode with an upright lance as an invitation for some Englishman to fight him. “He’s sworn to do some deed of great valor,” Sir John explained, “like killing me or another knight, and that’s a noble ambition.”

“It saves him from an arrow?” Hook responded dourly.

“Yes, Hook, it does. Let him live. He’s a brave man.”

More brave men approached that afternoon, but still no Englishmen responded, and so the Frenchmen became still bolder, riding close enough to recognize men they had met in tournaments across Europe. They chatted. There were maybe a dozen such French knights visible at any one time, and one of them, mounted on a tall and sprightly black horse that took the heavy soil with a high-stepping energy, spurred his way to the vanguard’s front. “Sir John!” the rider called. He was the Sire de Lanferelle, his long hair wet and lank.

“Lanferelle!”

“If I give you oats for your horse, you’ll match my lance?”

“If you give me oats,” Sir John called back, “my archers will eat!”

Lanferelle laughed. Sir John veered away from the road to ride beside the Frenchman and the two talked amicably. “They look like friends,” Melisande said.

“Maybe they are,” Hook suggested.

“And they will kill each other in battle?”

“Englishman!” It was Lanferelle who called to Hook and who now rode toward the archers. “Sir John says you married my daughter!”

“I did,” Hook said.

“And without my blessing,” Lanferelle said, sounding amused. He looked at Melisande. “You have the jupon I gave you?”

“Oui,” she said.

“Wear it,” her father said harshly, “if there’s a battle, wear it.”

“Because it will save me?” she asked bitterly. “The novice’s robe didn’t protect me in Soissons.”

“Damn Soissons, girl,” Lanferelle said, “and what happened there will happen to these men. They’re doomed!” He swept his arm to indicate the muddy, slow column. “The goddams are all doomed! I will take pleasure in saving you.”

“For what?”

“For whatever choice I make for you,” Lanferelle said. “You’ve tasted your freedom, and look where it has led you!” He smiled, his teeth surprisingly white. “You can come now? I shall take you away before we slaughter this army.”

“I stay with Nicholas,” she said.

“Then stay with the goddams,” Lanferelle said harshly, “and when your Nicholas is dead I shall take you away.” He wheeled his horse and, after a few more words with Sir John, rode south.

“The goddams?” Hook asked.

“It’s what the French call you English,” she said, then looked at Sir John. “Are we doomed?” she asked.

Sir John smiled ruefully. “It depends on whether their army catches us, and if it catches us, whether it can beat us. We’re still alive!”

“Will it catch us?” Melisande asked.

Sir John pointed north. “There was a small French army on the river’s northern bank,” he explained, “and they were keeping pace with us. They were making sure we couldn’t cross. They were driving us toward their bigger army. But here, my dear, the river curves north. A great curve! We’re cutting across country, but that smaller army has to ride all the way around and it will take them three or four days, and tomorrow we’ll be at the river and there’ll be no small army on the other side and if we find a ford or, God willing, a bridge, we’ll be across the Somme and riding for the taverns of Calais! We’ll go home!”

Yet each day they covered less ground. There was no grazing for the horses, and no oats, and every day more men dismounted to lead their weakening, tiring mounts. In the first week of the march the towns had given food to the passing army, but now the few small walled towns shut their gates and refused to offer any help. They knew the English could not spare the time to assault their ramparts, however decrepit, and so they watched the disconsolate column pass by and offered prayers that God would utterly destroy the weakened invaders.

And God’s displeasure was the last thing Henry dared risk, so that, on their last day on the plateau, the day before they would ride down into the valley of the Somme again, when a priest came to complain that an Englishman had stolen his church’s pyx, the king ordered the whole column to halt. Centenars and ventenars were commanded to search their men. The missing pyx, which was a copper-gilt box in which consecrated wafers were held, was evidently of little value, but the king was determined to find it. “Some poor bastard probably stole it to get the wafers,” Tom Scarlet suggested, “he ate the wafers and threw the pyx away.”

“Well, Hook?” Sir John demanded.

“None of us has it, Sir John.”

“One goddam pyx,” Sir John snarled, “a pox on the pyx, father!”

“If you say so, Sir John,” Father Christopher said.

“Give the French a chance to catch us because of one goddam pyx!”

“God will reward us if we discover the item,” Father Christopher suggested, “indeed, He has already lifted the rain!” It was true. Since the search had begun the rain had ended and a weak sun was struggling to clear the clouds and shine on the waterlogged land.

And then the pyx was found.

It had been hidden in the sleeve of an archer’s jerkin, a spare jerkin that he had evidently kept wrapped and tied to his horse’s pommel, though the archer himself claimed that he had seen neither jerkin nor pyx before. “They all claim innocence,” a royal chaplain told the king, “just hang him, sire.”

“We will hang him,” the king agreed vigorously, “and we’ll let every man see him hanged! This is what happens when you sin against God! Hang him!”

“No!” Hook protested.

Because the man being dragged to the tree where the king and his entourage waited was his brother Michael.

For whom the rope waited.

The king’s men dragged Michael to the base of the elm tree where Henry and his courtiers waited on horseback beside the country priest who had first complained about the theft of his pyx. The army, commanded to attend, was gathered in a vast circle, though few except those in the foremost ranks could see what happened. Two soldiers in mail coats half covered by the royal coat-of-arms had pinioned Michael Hook’s arms and were half pulling and half pushing him toward the king. They hardly needed to use force for Michael was going willingly enough. He just looked bemused.

“No!” Hook shouted.

“Shut your mouth,” Thomas Evelgold growled.

If the king heard Hook’s protest he showed no sign of it. His face was unmoving, hard-planed, shaven raw, implacable.

“He…” Hook began, intending to say his brother had not, could not, have stolen a pyx, but Evelgold turned fast and slammed his fist into Hook’s stomach, driving the wind from him.

“Next time, I break your jaw,” Evelgold said.

“My brother,” Hook panted, suddenly straining to draw breath.

“Quiet!” Sir John snarled from in front of his company.

“You offend God, you risk our whole campaign!” the king spoke to Michael, his voice like gravel. “How can we expect God to be on our side if we offend Him? You have put England itself at risk.”

“I didn’t steal it!” Michael pleaded.

“Whose company is he?” the king demanded.

Sir Edward Derwent stepped forward. “One of Lord Slayton’s archers, sire,” he said, bowing his graying head, “and I doubt, sire, that he is a thief.”

“The pyx was in his keeping?”

“It was found in his belongings, sire,” Sir Edward said carefully.

“The jerkin wasn’t mine, lord!” Michael said.

“You are certain the pyx was in his baggage?” the king asked Sir Edward, ignoring the fair-haired young archer who had dropped to his knees.

“It was, sire, though how it arrived there, I cannot tell.”

“Who discovered it?”

“Sire, me, sire,” Sir Martin, his priest’s robe discolored by clay, stepped out of the crowd. “It was me, sire,” he said, dropping to one knee. “And he’s a good boy, sire, he’s a Christian boy, sire.”

Sir Edward might have protested Michael’s innocence all day and not moved the king to doubt, but a priest’s word carried far more weight. Henry gathered his reins and leaned forward in his saddle. “Are you saying he did not take the pyx?”

“He…” Hook began, and Evelgold hit him so hard in the belly that Hook doubled over.

“The pyx was found in his baggage, sire,” Sir Martin said.

“Then?” the king started, then checked. He looked puzzled. One moment the priest had suggested Michael’s innocence, now he suggested the opposite.

“It is incontrovertible, sire,” Sir Martin said, managing to sound mournful, “that the pyx was among his belongings. It saddens me, sire, it galls my heart.”

“It angers me,” the king shouted, “and it angers God! We risk His displeasure, His wrath, for a copper box! Hang him!”

“Sire!” Michael called, but there was no pity, no appeal, and no hope. The rope was already tied about a branch, the noose was pushed over Michael’s head, and two men hauled on the bitter end to hoist him into the air.

Hook’s brother made a choking noise as he thrashed desperately, his legs jerking and thrusting, and slowly, very slowly the thrashing turned to spasms, to quivers, and the choking noise became short harsh gasps and finally faded to nothing. It took twenty minutes, and the king watched every twitch, and only when he was satisfied that the thief was dead did he take his eyes from the body. He dismounted then and, in front of his army, went on one knee to the astonished country priest. “We beg your forgiveness,” he said loudly and speaking in English, a language the priest did not understand, “and the forgiveness of Almighty God.” He held out the pyx in both hands and the priest, frightened by what he had seen, took it nervously, then a look of astonishment came to his face because the little box was much heavier than it had ever been before. The King of England had filled it with coin.

“Leave the body there!” Henry commanded, getting to his feet. “And march! Let us march!” He took his horse’s reins, put a foot into the stirrup, and swung himself lithely into the saddle. He rode away, followed by his entourage, and Hook moved toward the tree where his brother’s body hung.

“Where the hell are you going?” Sir John asked harshly.

“I’ll bury him,” Hook said.

“You’re a goddamned fool, Hook,” Sir John said, then hit Hook’s face with a mailed hand, “what are you?”

“He didn’t do it!” Hook protested.

Sir John struck him again, much harder, gouging scratches of blood into Hook’s cheek. “It doesn’t matter that he didn’t do it,” he snarled. “God needed a sacrifice, and He got one. Maybe we’ll live because your brother died.”

“He didn’t steal, he’s never stolen, he’s honest!” Hook said.

The gloved hand hammered Hook’s other cheek. “And you do not protest at the decisions of our king,” Sir John said, “and you do not bury him because the king doesn’t want him buried! You are lucky, Hook, not to be hanging beside your brother with piss running down your goddam leg. Now get on your horse and ride.”

“The priest lied!”

“That is your business,” Sir John said, “not mine, and it is certainly not the king’s business. Get on your horse or I’ll have your goddam ears cut off.”

Hook got on his horse. The other archers avoided him, sensing his ill-luck. Only Melisande rode with him.

Sir John’s men were first on the road. Hook, bitter and dazed, was unaware that he was passing Lord Slayton’s men until Melisande hissed, and only then did he notice the archers who had once been his comrades. Thomas Perrill was grinning triumphantly and pointing to his eye, a reminder of his suspicion that Hook had murdered his brother, while Sir Martin stared at Melisande, then glanced at Hook and could not resist a smile when he saw the archer’s tears.

“You will kill them all,” Melisande promised him.

If the French did not do the job for him, Hook thought. They rode on downhill, going now toward the Somme and toward the army’s only hope; an unguarded ford or bridge.

It started to rain again.