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

THREE

Even in summer the hall of Calais Castle was chilly. The thick stone walls kept the warmth at bay and so a great fire crackled in the hearth, and in front of the stone fireplace was a wide rug on which two couches stood and six hounds slept. The rest of the room was stone-flagged. Swords were racked along one wall, and iron-tipped lances rested on trestles. Sparrows flitted among the beams. The shutters at the western end of the hall were open and Hook could hear the endless stirring of the sea.

The garrison commander and his elegant lady sat on one couch. Hook had been told their names, but the words had slithered through his head and so he did not know who they were. Six men-at-arms stood behind the couch, all watching Hook and Melisande with skeptical and hostile eyes, while a priest stood at the rug’s edge, looking down at the two fugitives who knelt on the stone flags. “I do not understand,” the priest said in a nasally unpleasant voice, “why you left Lord Slayton’s service.”

“Because I refused to kill a girl, father,” Hook explained.

“And Lord Slayton wished her dead?”

“His priest did, sir.”

“Sir Giles Fallowby’s son,” the man on the couch put in, and his voice suggested he did not like Sir Martin.

“So a man of God wished her dead,” the priest ignored the garrison commander’s tone, “yet you knew better?” His voice was dangerous with menace.

“She was only a girl,” Hook said.

“It was through woman,” the priest pounced fiercely on Hook’s answer, “that sin entered the world.”

The elegant lady put a long pale hand over her mouth as if to hide a yawn. There was a tiny dog on her lap, a little bundle of white fur studded with pugnacious eyes, and she stroked its head. “I am bored,” she said, speaking to no one in particular.

There was a long silence. One of the hounds whimpered in its sleep and the garrison commander leaned forward to pat its head. He was a heavyset, black-bearded man who now gestured impatiently toward Hook. “Ask him about Soissons, father,” he ordered.

“I was coming to that, Sir William,” the priest said.

“Then come to it quickly,” the woman said coldly.

“Are you outlawed?” the priest asked instead and, when the archer did not answer, he repeated the question more loudly and still Hook did not answer.

“Answer him,” Sir William growled.

“I would have thought his silence was eloquence itself,” the lady said. “Ask him about Soissons.”

The priest grimaced at her commanding tone, but obeyed. “Tell us what happened in Soissons,” he demanded, and Hook told the tale again, how the French had entered the town by the southern gate and how they had raped and killed, and how Sir Roger Pallaire had betrayed the English archers.

“And you alone escaped?” the priest asked sourly.

“Saint Crispinian helped me,” Hook said.

“Oh! Saint Crispinian did?” the priest asked, raising an eyebrow. “How very obliging of him.” There was a snort of half-suppressed laughter from one of the men-at-arms, while the others just stared with distaste at the kneeling archer. Disbelief hung in the castle’s great hall like the woodsmoke that leaked around the wide hearth’s opening. Another of the men-at-arms was staring fixedly at Melisande and now leaned close to his neighbor and whispered something that made the other man laugh. “Or did the French let you go?” the priest demanded sharply.

“No, sir!” Hook said.

“Perhaps they let you go for a reason!”

“No!”

“Even a humble archer can count men,” the priest said, “and if our lord the king collects an army, then the French will wish to know numbers.”

“No, sir!” Hook said again.

“So they let you go, and bribed you with a whore?” the priest suggested.

“She’s no whore!” Hook protested and the men-at-arms sniggered.

Melisande had not yet spoken. She had seemed overawed by the big men in their mail coats and by the supercilious priest and by the languorous woman who sprawled on the cushioned couch, but now Melisande found her tongue. She might not have understood the priest’s insult, but she recognized his tone, and she suddenly straightened her back and spoke fast and defiantly. She spoke French, and spoke it so quickly that Hook did not understand one word in a hundred, but everyone else in the room spoke the language and they all listened. She spoke passionately, indignantly, and neither the garrison commander nor the priest interrupted her. Hook knew she was telling the tale of Soissons’s fall, and after a while tears came to her eyes and rolled down her cheeks and her voice rose as she hammered the priest with her story. She ran out of words, gestured at Hook and her head dropped as she began to sob.

There was silence for a few heartbeats. A sergeant in a mail coat noisily opened the hall door, saw that the room was occupied, and left just as loudly. Sir William looked judiciously at Hook. “You murdered Sir Roger Pallaire?” he asked harshly.

“I killed him, sir.”

“A good deed from an outlaw,” Sir William’s wife said firmly, “if what the girl says is true.”

“If,” the priest said.

“I believe her,” the woman said, then rose from the couch, tucked the little dog into one arm, and walked to the rug’s edge where she stooped and raised Melisande by the elbow. She spoke to her in soft French, then led her toward the hall’s far end and so through a curtained opening.

Sir William waited till his wife was gone, then stood. “I believe he’s telling the truth, father,” he said firmly.

“He might be,” the priest conceded.

“I believe he is,” Sir William insisted.

“We could put him to the test?” the priest suggested with scarcely concealed eagerness.

“You would torture him?” Sir William asked, shocked.

“The truth is sacred, my lord,” the priest said, bowing slightly. “Et cognoscetis veritatem,” he declaimed, “et veritas liberabit vos!” He made the sign of the cross. “You will know the truth, my lord,” he translated, “and the truth will set you free.”

“I am free,” the black-bearded man snarled, “and it is not our duty to rack the truth out of some poor archer. We shall leave that to others.”

“Of course, my lord,” the priest said, barely hiding his disappointment.

“Then you know where he must go.”

“Indeed, my lord.”

“So arrange it,” Sir William said before crossing to Hook and indicating that the archer should stand. “Did you kill any of them?” he demanded.

“A lot, my lord,” Hook said, remembering the arrows flying into the half-lit breach.

“Good,” Sir William said implacably, “but you also killed Sir Roger Pallaire. That makes you either a hero or a murderer.”

“I’m an archer,” Hook said stubbornly.

“And an archer whose tale must be heard across the water,” Sir William said, then handed Hook a silver coin. “We’ve heard tales of Soissons,” he went on grimly, “but you are the first to bring confirmation.”

“If he was there,” the priest remarked snidely.

“You heard the girl,” Sir William snarled at the priest who bridled at the admonition. Sir William turned back to Hook. “Tell your tale in England.”

“I’m outlawed,” Hook said uncertainly.

“You’ll do what you’re told to do,” Sir William snapped, “and you’re going to England.”

And so Hook and Melisande were taken aboard a ship that sailed to England. They then traveled with a courier who carried messages to London and also had money that paid for ale and food on the journey. Melisande was dressed in decent clothes now, provided by Lady Bardolf, Sir William’s wife, and she rode a small mare that the courier had demanded from the stables in Dover Castle. She was saddle-sore by the time they reached London where, having crossed the bridge, they surrendered their horses to the grooms in the Tower. “You will wait here,” the courier commanded them, and would not tell Hook more, and so he and Melisande found a place to sleep in the cow byre, and no one in the great fortress seemed to know why they had been summoned there.

“You’re not prisoners,” a sergeant of archers told them.

“But we’re not allowed out,” Hook said.

“No, you’re not allowed out,” the ventenar conceded, “but you’re not prisoners.” He grinned. “If you were prisoners, lad, you wouldn’t be cuddling that little lass every night. Where’s your bow?”

“Lost it in France.”

“Then let’s find you a new one,” the ventenar said. He was called Venables and he had fought for the old king at Shrewsbury where he had taken an arrow in the leg that had left him with a limp. He led Hook to an undercroft of the great keep where there were wide wooden racks holding hundreds of newly made bows. “Pick one,” Venables said.

It was dim in the undercroft where the bowstaves, each longer than a tall man, lay close together. None was strung, though all were tipped with horn nocks ready to take their cords. Hook pulled them out one by one and ran a hand across their thick bellies. The bows, he decided, had been well made. Some were knobbly where the bowyer had let a knot stand proud rather than weaken the wood, and most had a faintly greasy feel because they had been painted with a mix of wax and tallow. A few bows were unpainted, the wood still seasoning, but those bows were not yet ready for the cord and Hook ignored them. “They’re mostly made in Kent,” Venables said, “but a few come from London. They don’t make good archers in this part of the world, boy, but they do make good bows.”

“They do,” Hook agreed. He had pulled one of the longest staves from the rack. The timber swelled to a thick belly that he gripped in his left hand as he flexed the upper limb a small amount. He took the bow to a place where sunlight shone through a rusted grating.

The stave was a thing of beauty, he thought. The yew had been cut in a southern country where the sun shone brighter, and this bow had been carved from the tree’s trunk. It was close-grained and had no knots. Hook ran his hand down the wood, feeling its swell and fingering the small ridges left by the bowyer’s float, the drawknife that shaped the weapon. The stave was new because the sapwood, which formed the back of the bow, was almost white. In time, he knew, it would turn to the color of honey, but for now the bow’s back, which would be farthest from him when he hauled the cord, was the shade of Melisande’s breasts. The belly of the bow, made from the trunk’s heartwood, was dark brown, the color of Melisande’s face, so that the bow seemed to be made of two strips of wood, one white and one brown, which were perfectly married, though in truth the stave was one single shaft of beautifully smoothed timber cut from where the heartwood and sapwood met in the yew’s trunk.

God made the bow, a priest had once said in Hook’s village church, as God made man and woman. The visiting priest had meant that God had married heartwood and sapwood, and it was this marriage that made the great war bow so lethal. The dark heartwood of the bow’s belly was stiff and unyielding. It resisted bending, while the light-colored sapwood of the bow’s spine did not mind being pulled into a curve, yet, like the heartwood, it wanted to straighten and it possessed a springiness that, released from pressure, whipped the stave back to its normal shape. So the flexible spine pulled and the stiff belly pushed, and so the long arrow flew.

“Have to be strong to pull that one,” Venables said dubiously. “God knows what that bowyer was thinking! Maybe he thought Goliath needed a stave, eh?”

“He didn’t want to cut the stave,” Hook suggested, “because it’s perfect.”

“If you think you can draw it, lad, it’s yours. Help yourself to a bracer,” Venables said, gesturing to a pile of horn bracers, “and to a cord.” He waved toward a barrel of strings.

The cords had a faintly sticky feel because the hemp had been coated with hoof glue to protect the strings from damp. Hook found a couple of long cords and tied a loop-knot in the end of one that he hooked over the notched horn-tip of the bow’s lower limb. Then, using all his strength, he flexed the bow to judge the length of cord needed, made a loop in the other end of the string and, again exerting every scrap of muscle power, bent the bow and slipped the new loop over the top horn nock. The center of the cord, where it would lie on the horn-sliver in an arrow’s nock, had been whipped with more hemp to strengthen the string where it notched into the arrows.

“Shoot it in,” Venables suggested. He was a middle-aged man in the service of the Tower’s constable and he was a friendly soul, liking to spend his day chattering to anyone who would listen to his stories of battles long ago. He carried an arrow bag up to the stretch of mud and grass outside the keep and dropped it with a clatter. Hook put the bracer on his left forearm, tying its strings so the slip of horn lay on the inside of his wrist to protect his skin from the bowstring’s lash. A scream sounded and was cut off. “That’s Brother Bailey,” Venables said in explanation.

“Brother Bailey?”

“Brother Bailey is a Benedictine,” Venables said, “and the king’s chief torturer. He’s getting the truth out of some poor bastard.”

“They wanted to torture me in Calais,” Hook said.

“They did?”

“A priest did.”

“They’re always eager to twist the rack, aren’t they? I never did understand that! They tell you God loves you, then they kick the shit out of you. Well, if they do question you, lad, tell them the truth.”

“I did.”

“Mind you, that doesn’t always help,” Venables said. The scream sounded again and he jerked his head toward the muffled noise. “That poor bastard probably did tell the truth, but Brother Bailey does like to be certain, he does. Let’s see how that stave shoots, shall we?”

Hook planted a score of arrows point down in the soil. A faded and much punctured target was propped in front of a stack of rotting hay at the top of the stretch of grass. The range was short, no more than a hundred paces, and the target was twice as wide as a man and Hook would have expected to hit that easy mark every time, but he suspected his first arrows would fly wild.

The bow was under tension, but now he had to teach it to bend. He drew it only a short way the first time and the arrow scarcely reached the target. He drew it a little further, then again, each time bringing the cord closer to his face, yet never drawing the bow to its full curve. He shot arrow after arrow, and all the time he was learning the bow’s idiosyncrasies and the bow was learning to yield to his pressure, and it was an hour before he pulled the cord back to his ear and loosed the first arrow with the stave’s full power.

He did not know it, but he was smiling. There was a beauty there, a beauty of yew and hemp, of silk and feathers, of steel and ash, of man and weapon, of pure power, of the bow’s vicious tension that, released through fingers rubbed raw by the coarse hemp, shot the arrow to hiss in its flight and thump as it struck home. The last arrow went clean through the riddled target’s center and buried itself to its feathers in the hay. “You’ve done this before,” Venables said with a grin.

“I have,” Hook agreed, “but I’ve been away too long. Fingers are sore!”

“They’ll harden fast, lad,” Venables said, “and if they don’t torture and kill you, then you might think of joining us! Not a bad life at the Tower. Good food, plenty of it, and not much in the way of duties.”

“I’d like that,” Hook said absent-mindedly. He was concentrating on the bow. He had thought that the weeks of travel might have diminished his strength and eroded his skill, but he was pulling easily, loosing smoothly, and aiming true. There was a slight ache in his shoulder and back, and his two fingertips were scraped raw, but that was all. And he was happy, he suddenly realized. That thought checked him, made him stare in wonder at the target. Saint Crispinian had guided him into a sunlit place and had given him Melisande, and then the happiness soured as he remembered he was still an outlaw. If Sir Martin or Lord Slayton discovered that Nicholas Hook was alive and in England they would demand him and would probably hang him.

“Let’s see how quick you are,” Venables suggested.

Hook pushed another handful of arrows into the turf and remembered the night of smoke and screams when the glimmering metal-clad men had come through the breach of Soissons and he had shot again and again, not thinking, not aiming, just letting the bow do its work. This new bow was stronger, more lethal, but just as quick. He did not think, he just loosed, picked a new arrow and laid it over the bow, raised the stave, hauled the cord and loosed again. A dozen arrows whickered over the turf and struck the target one after the other. If a man’s spread hand had been over the central mark then each arrow would have struck it.

“Twelve,” a cheerful voice said behind him, “one arrow for each disciple.” Hook turned to see a priest watching him. The man, who had a round, merry face framed by wispy white hair, was carrying a great leather bag in one hand and had Melisande’s elbow firmly clutched in the other. “You must be Master Hook!” the priest said, “of course you are! I’m Father Ralph, may I try?” He put down the bag, released Melisande’s arm, and reached for Hook’s bow. “Do allow me,” he pleaded, “I used to draw the bow in my youth!”

Hook surrendered the bow and watched as Father Ralph tried to pull the cord. The priest was a well-built man, though grown rather portly from good living, but even so he only managed to pull the cord back about a hand’s breadth before the stave began quivering with the effort. Father Ralph shook his head. “I’m not the man I was!” he said, then gave the bow back and watched as Hook, apparently effortlessly, bent the long stave to unhook the string. “It is time we all talked,” Father Ralph said very cheerfully. “A most excellent day to you, Sergeant Venables, how are you?”

“I’m well, father, very well!” Venables grinned, bobbed his head, and knuckled his forehead. “Leg doesn’t hurt much, father, not if the wind ain’t in the east.”

“Then I shall pray God to send you nothing but west winds!” Father Ralph said happily, “nothing but westerlies! Come, Master Hook! Shed light upon my darkness! Illuminate me!”

The priest, again clutching his bag, led Hook and Melisande to rooms built against the Tower’s curtain wall. The chamber he chose, which was small and paneled with carved timber, had two chairs and a table and Father Ralph insisted on finding a third chair. “Sit yourselves,” he said, “sit, sit!”

He wished to know the full story of Soissons and so, in English and French, Hook and Melisande told their tale again. They described the assault, the rapes and the murders, and Father Ralph’s pen never stopped scratching. His bag contained sheets of parchment, an ink flask and quills, and he wrote unceasingly, occasionally throwing in a question. Melisande spoke the most, her voice sounding indignant as she recounted the night’s horrors. “Tell me about the nuns,” Father Ralph said, then made a fluttery gesture as if he had been a fool and repeated the question in French. Melisande sounded ever more indignant, staring wide-eyed at Father Ralph when he motioned her to silence so his pen could catch up with her flood of words.

Hoofbeats sounded outside and, a few moments later, there was the clangor of swords striking each other. Hook, as Melisande told her story, looked through the open window to see men-at-arms practicing on the ground where his arrows had flown. They were all dressed in full plate armor that made a dull sound if a blade struck. One man, distinctive because his armor was black, was being attacked by two others and he was defending himself skillfully, though Hook had the impression that the two men were not trying as hard as they might. A score of other men applauded the contest. “Et gladius diaboli,” Father Ralph read aloud slowly as he finished writing a sentence, “repletus est sanguine. Good! Oh, that is most excellent!”

“Is that Latin, father?” Hook asked.

“It is, yes! Yes, indeed! Latin! The language of God! Or perhaps He speaks Hebrew? I suppose that’s more likely and it will make things rather awkward in heaven, won’t it? Will we all have to learn Hebrew? Or maybe we shall find ourselves gloriously voluble in that language when we reach the heavenly pastures. I was saying how the devil’s sword was slaked with blood!” Father Ralph chuckled at that sentiment, then motioned for Melisande to continue. He wrote again, his pen flying over the parchment. The sound of confident male laughter sounded from the turf outside where two other men-at-arms now fought, their swords quick in the sunlight. “You wonder,” Father Ralph asked when he had finished yet another page, “why I transcribe your tale into Latin?”

“Yes, father.”

“So all Christendom will know what sanguinary devils the French are! We shall copy this tale a hundred times and send it to every bishop, every abbot, every king, and every prince in Christendom. Let them know the truth of Soissons! Let them know how the French treat their own people! Let them know that Satan’s dwelling place is in France, eh?” He smiled.

“Satan does live there,” a harsh voice spoke behind Hook, “and he must be driven out!” Hook twisted in his chair to see that the black-armored man-at-arms was standing in the doorway. He had taken off his helmet and his brown hair was plastered down by sweat in which an impression of his helmet liner remained. He was a young man who looked familiar, though Hook could not place him, but then Hook saw the deep scar beside the long nose and he almost knocked the chair over as he scrambled to kneel before his king. His heart was beating fast and the terror was as great as when he had waited by the breach at Soissons. The king. That was all he could think of, this was the king.

Henry made an irritable gesture that Hook should rise, an order Hook was too nervous to obey. The king edged between the table and the wall to look at what Father Ralph had written. “My Latin is not what it should be,” he said, “but the gist is clear enough.”

“It confirms all the rumors we heard, sire,” Father Ralph said.

“Sir Roger Pallaire?”

“Killed by this young man, sire,” Father Ralph said, gesturing at Hook.

“He was a traitor,” the king said coldly, “our agents in France have confirmed that.”

“He screams in hell now, sire,” Father Ralph said, “and his screams shall not end with time itself.”

“Good,” Henry said curtly and sifted the pages. “Nuns? Surely not?”

“Indeed, sire,” Father Ralph said. “The brides of Christ were violated and murdered. They were dragged from their prayers to become playthings, sire. We had heard of it and we had scarce dared to believe it, but this young lady confirms it.”

The king rested his gaze on Melisande, who, like Hook, had dropped to her knees where, like Hook, she quivered with nervousness. “Get up,” the king said to her, then looked at a crucifix hanging on the wall. He frowned and bit his lower lip. “Why did God allow it, father?” he asked after a while, and there was both pain and puzzlement in his voice. “Nuns? God should have protected them, surely? He should have sent angels to guard them!”

“Perhaps God wanted their fate to be a sign,” Father Ralph suggested.

“A sign?”

“Of the wickedness of the French, sire, and thus the righteousness of your claim to that unhappy realm’s crown.”

“My task, then, is to avenge the nuns,” Henry said.

“You have many tasks, sire,” Father Ralph said humbly, “but that is certainly one.”

Henry looked at Hook and Melisande, his armored fingers tapping on the table. Hook dared to look up once and saw the anxiety on the king’s narrow face. That surprised him. He would have guessed that a king was above worry and aloof to questions of right or wrong, but it was clear that this king was pained by his need to discover God’s will. “So these two,” Henry said, still watching Hook and Melisande, “are telling the truth?”

“I would swear to it, sire,” Father Ralph said warmly.

The king gazed at Melisande, his face betraying no emotion, then the cold eyes slid to Hook. “Why did you alone survive?” he asked in a suddenly hard voice.

“I prayed, sire,” Hook said humbly.

“The others didn’t pray?” the king asked sharply.

“Some did, sire.”

“But God chose to answer your prayers?”

“I prayed to Saint Crispinian, sire,” Hook said, paused, then plunged on with his answer, “and he spoke to me.”

Silence again. A raven cawed outside and the clash of swords echoed from the Tower’s keep. Then the King of England reached out his gauntleted hand and tipped Hook’s face up so he could look into the archer’s eyes. “He spoke to you?” the king asked.

Hook hesitated. He felt as though his heart was beating at the base of his throat. Then he decided to tell the whole truth, however unlikely it sounded. “Saint Crispinian spoke to me, sire,” he said, “in my head.”

The king just stared at Hook. Father Ralph opened his mouth as though he were about to speak, but a mailed royal hand cautioned the priest to silence and Henry, King of England, went on staring so that Hook felt fear creep up his spine like a cold snake. “It’s warm in here,” the king said suddenly, “you will talk with me outside.”

For a heartbeat Hook thought he must have been speaking to Father Ralph, but it was Hook the king wanted, and so Nicholas Hook went into the afternoon sunshine and walked beside his king. Henry’s armor squeaked slightly as it rubbed against the greased leather beneath. His men-at-arms had instinctively approached as he appeared, but he waved them away. “Tell me,” Henry said, “how Crispinian spoke to you.”

Hook told how both saints had appeared to him, and how both had spoken to him, but that it was Crispinian who had been the friendly voice. He felt embarrassed to describe the conversations, but Henry took it seriously. He stopped and faced Hook. He was half a head shorter than the archer, so he had to look up to judge Hook’s face, but it appeared he was more than satisfied by what he saw. “You are blessed,” he said. “I would wish the saints would speak to me,” he said wistfully. “You have been spared for a purpose,” he added firmly.

“I’m just a forester, sire,” Hook said awkwardly. For a heartbeat he was tempted to tell the further truth, that he was an outlaw too, but caution checked his tongue.

“No, you are an archer,” the king insisted, “and it was in our realm of France that the saints assisted you. You are God’s instrument.”

Hook did not know what to say and so said nothing.

“God granted me the thrones of England and of France,” the king said harshly, “and if it is His will, we shall take the throne of France back.” His mailed right fist clenched suddenly. “If we do so decide,” he went on, “I shall want men favored by the saints of France. Are you a good archer?”

“I think so, sire,” Hook said diffidently.

“Venables!” the king called and the ventenar limped hurriedly across the turf and fell to his knees. “Can he shoot?” Henry asked.

Venables grinned. “As good as any man I ever did see, sire. As good as the man who put that arrow into your face.”

The king evidently liked Venables for he smiled at the slight insolence, then touched an iron-sheathed finger to the deep scar beside his nose. “If he’d shot harder, Venables, you would have another king now.”

“Then God did a good deed that day, sire, in preserving you, and God be thanked for that great mercy.”

“Amen,” Henry said. He offered Hook a swift smile. “The arrow glanced off a helmet,” he explained, “and that took the force from it, but it still went deep.”

“You should have had your visor closed, sire,” Venables said reprovingly.

“Men should see a prince’s face in battle,” Henry said firmly, then looked back to Hook. “We shall find you a lord.”

“I’m outlawed, lord,” Hook blurted out, unable to conceal the truth any longer. “I’m sorry, sire.”

“Outlawed?” the king asked harshly, “for what crime?”

Hook had dropped to his knees again. “For hitting a priest, sire.”

The king was silent and Hook dared not look up. He expected punishment, but instead, to his astonishment, the king chuckled. “It seems that Saint Crispinian has forgiven you that grievous error, so who am I to condemn you? And in this realm,” Henry went on, his voice harder now, “a man is what I say he is, and I say you are an archer and we shall find you a lord.” Henry, without another word, walked back to his companions and Hook let out a long breath.

Sergeant Venables climbed to his feet, flinching from the pain in his wounded leg. “Chatted to you, did he?”

“Yes, sergeant.”

“He likes doing that. His father didn’t. His father was all gloomy, but our Hal is never too grand to say a word or two to a common bastard like you or me.” Venables spoke warmly. “So, he’s finding you a new lord?”

“So he said.”

“Well, let’s hope it’s not Sir John.”

“Sir John?”

“Mad bastard he is,” Venables said, “mad and bad. Sir John will have you killed in no time at all!” Venables chuckled, then nodded to the houses built against the curtain wall. “Father Ralph is looking for you.”

Father Ralph was beckoning from the doorway. So Hook went to finish his tale.

“Jesus weeping Christ, you spavined fart! Cross it! Cross it! Don’t flap it like a wet cock! Cross it! Then close me!” Sir John Cornewaille snarled at Hook.

The sword came again, slashing at Hook’s waist, and this time Hook managed to cross his own blade to parry the blow and, as he did so, pushed forward, only to be thumped back by a thrust of Sir John’s mailed fist. “Keep coming,” Sir John urged him, “crowd me, get me down on the ground, then finish me!” Instead Hook stepped back and brought up his sword to deflect the next swing of Sir John’s blade. “What in Christ’s name is the matter with you?” Sir John shouted in rage. “Have you been weakened by that French whore of yours? By that titless streak of scabby French gristle? Christ’s bones, man, find a real woman! Goddington!” Sir John glanced at his centenar, “why don’t you spread that scabby whore’s skinny legs and see if she can even be humped?”

Hook felt the sudden anger then, a red mist of rage that drove him onto Sir John’s blade, but the older man stepped lithely aside and flicked his sword so that the blade’s flat rapped the back of Hook’s skull. Hook turned, his own sword scything at Sir John, who parried easily. Sir John was in full armor, yet moved as lightly as a dancer. He lunged at Hook, and this time Hook remembered the advice and he swept the lunge aside and threw himself on his opponent, using all his weight and height to unbalance the older man, and he knew he was going to hammer Sir John onto the ground where he would beat him to a pulp, but instead he felt a thumping smack on the back of his skull, his vision went dark, the world reeled, and a second crashing blow with the heavy pommel of Sir John’s sword threw him face down into the early winter stubble.

He did not hear much of what Sir John said in the next few minutes. Hook’s head was painful and spinning, but as he gradually recovered his senses he heard some of the snarled peroration. “You can feel anger before a fight! But in the fight? Keep your goddam wits about you! Anger will get you killed.” Sir John wheeled on Hook. “Get up. Your mail’s filthy. Clean it. And there’s rust on the sword blade. I’ll have you whipped if it’s still there at sundown.”

“He won’t whip you,” Goddington, the centenar, told Hook that evening. “He’ll thump you and cut you and maybe break your bones, but it’ll be in a fair fight.”

“I’ll break his bones,” Hook said vengefully.

Goddington laughed. “One man, Hook, just one man has held Sir John to a drawn fight in the last ten years. He’s won every tournament in Europe. You won’t beat him, you won’t even come close. He’s a fighter.”

“He’s a bastard!” Hook said. The back of his head was matted with blood. Melisande was cleaning his mail and Hook was scrubbing at the rust on his sword blade with a stone. Both sword and mail had been supplied by Sir John Cornewaille.

“He was goading you, boy, he meant nothing,” Goddington said to Hook. “He insults everyone, but if you’re his man, and you will be, he’ll fight for you too. And he’ll fight for your woman.”

Next day Hook watched as Sir John put archer after archer onto the ground. When his own turn came to face Sir John he managed to trade a dozen blows before being turned, tripped, and thrown down. Sir John backed away from him, scorn on his scarred face, and that scorn drove Hook to his feet and to a wild, savage charge and a searing cut with the sword that Sir John contemptuously flicked away before tripping Hook again. “Anger, Hook,” Sir John growled, “if you don’t control it, it’ll kill you, and a dead archer’s no good to me. Fight cold, man. Fight cold and hard. Fight clever!” To Hook’s surprise he reached out a hand and pulled Hook to his feet. “But you’re quick, Hook,” Sir John said, “you’re quick! And that’s good.”

Sir John looked to be close on forty years old, but he was still the most feared tournament fighter in Europe. He was a squat, thick-chested man, bowlegged from years spent on horseback. He had the brightest blue eyes Hook had ever seen, while his flat, broken-nosed face showed the scars of battles, whether fought against rebels, Frenchmen, tavern brawlers, or tournament opponents. Now, in anticipation of war with France, he was raising a company of archers and another of men-at-arms, though in Sir John’s eyes, there was no great difference between the two. “We are a company!” he shouted at the archers, “archers and men-at-arms together! We fight for each other! No one hurts one of us and goes unhurt!” He turned and poked a metal finger into Hook’s chest. “You’ll do, Hook. Give him his coat, Goddington.”

Peter Goddington brought Hook a surcoat of white linen that showed Sir John’s badge: a red rampant lion with a golden star on its shoulder and a golden crown on its snarling head.

“Welcome to the company,” Sir John said, “and to your new duties. What are your new duties, Hook?”

“To serve you, Sir John.”

“No! I’ve got servants who do that! Your job, Hook, is to rid the world of anyone I don’t like! What is it?”

“To rid the world of anyone you don’t like, Sir John.”

And that was liable to be a large part of the world. Sir John Cornewaille loved his king, he worshipped his older wife who was the king’s aunt, he adored the women on whom he fathered bastards, and he was devoted to his men, but the rest of the world were nearly all goddam scum who deserved to die. He tolerated his fellow Englishmen, but the Welsh were cabbage-farting dwarves, the Scots were scabby arse-suckers, and the French were shriveled turds. “You know what you do with shriveled turds, Hook?”

“You kill them, Sir John.”

“You get up close and kill them,” Sir John said. “You let them smell your breath as they die. You let them see you grinning as you disembowel them. You hurt them, Hook, and then you kill them. Isn’t that right, father?”

“You speak with the tongue of angels, Sir John,” Father Christopher said blandly. He was Sir John’s confessor and, like the company of archers gathered in the field, wore a mail coat, tall boots, and a close-fitting helmet. There was nothing about him to suggest he was a priest, but if there had been any such evidence then he would not have been in Sir John’s employment. Sir John wanted soldiers.

“You’re not archers,” Sir John growled at the bowmen in the winter field. “You shoot arrows till the putrid bastards are on top of you, and then you kill them like men-at-arms! You’re no good to me if you can only shoot! I want you so close you can smell their dying farts! Ever killed a man so close you could have kissed him, Hook?”

“Yes, Sir John.”

Sir John grinned. “Tell me about the last one? How did you do it?”

“With a knife, Sir John.”

“How! Not what with! How?”

“Ripped his belly, Sir John,” Hook said, “straight up.”

“Did you get your hand wet, Hook?”

“Drenched, Sir John.”

“Wet with a Frenchman’s blood, eh?”

“He was an English knight, Sir John.”

“God damn your bollocks, Hook, but I love you!” Sir John exclaimed. “That’s how you do it!” he shouted at the archers, “you rip their bellies open, shove blades in their eyes, slice their throats, cut off their bollocks, drive swords up their arses, tear out their gullets, gouge their livers, skewer their kidneys, I don’t care how you do it, so long as you kill them! Isn’t that right, Father Christopher?”

“Our Lord and Savior could not have expressed the sentiment more eloquently, Sir John.”

“And next year,” Sir John said, glowering at his archers, “we might be going to war! Our king, God bless him, is the rightful King of France, but the French deny him his throne, and if God is doing what He’s supposed to do then He’ll let us invade France! And if that happens, we will be ready!”

No one was certain if war was coming or not. The French sent ambassadors to King Henry who sent emissaries back to France, and rumors swept England like the winter rains that seethed on the west wind. Sir John, though, was confident there would be war and he made a contract with the king as scores of other men were doing. The contract obliged Sir John to bring thirty men-at-arms and ninety archers to serve the king for twelve months, and in turn the king promised to pay wages to Sir John and his soldiers. The contract had been written in London and Hook was among the ten men who rode to Westminster when Sir John added his signature and pressed his lion seal into a blob of wax. The clerk waited for the wax to harden, then carefully cut the parchment into two unequal parts, not neatly, but zigzagging his blade randomly down the document’s length. He put one ragged part into a white linen bag, and gave the other to Sir John. Now, if anyone doubted the document’s provenance, the two uneven parts could be matched and neither party to the contract could forge the document and expect the forgery to go undiscovered. “The exchequer will advance you monies, Sir John,” the clerk said.

The king was raising money by taxes, by loans, and by pawning his jewels. Sir John received a bag of coins and a second bag that contained loose jewels, a golden brooch, and a heavy silver box. It was not enough to allow Sir John to raise the extra men and to buy the weapons and horses he needed, and so he borrowed more money from an Italian banker in London.

Men, horses, armor, and weapons had to be purchased. Sir John, his pages, squires, and servants needed over fifty horses between them. Each man-at-arms was expected to own at least three horses, including a properly trained destrier for fighting, while Sir John undertook to supply every archer with a riding horse. Hay was needed to feed all the horses and had to be purchased until the spring rains greened the pastures. The men-at-arms provided their own armor and weapons, though Sir John did order a hundred short lances for use by men fighting on foot. He had also equipped his ninety archers with mail coats, helmets, good boots, and a weapon to use in the close-quarter fighting when their bows were no longer useful. “Swords won’t help you much in battle,” he told his archers. “Your enemies will be in plate armor and you can’t cut plate armor with a sword. Use a poleax! Beat the bastards down! Then kneel on the arse-sucking scabs, lift their visors, and put a knife into one of their filthy eyes.”

“Unless they are wealthy,” Father Christopher put in mildly. The priest was the oldest man in Sir John’s company, over forty years old, with a round, cheerful face, a twisted smile, gray hair, and eyes that were both curious and mischievous.

“Unless the arse-licking scab is wealthy,” Sir John agreed, “in which case you take him prisoner and so make me rich!”

Sir John ordered a hundred poleaxes made for his archers. Hook, who knew how to shape wood, helped carve the long ash handles, while blacksmiths forged the heads. One side of each head was a heavy hammer, weighted with lead, which could be used to crush plate armor or, at the very least, knock an armored man off balance. The opposing side was an ax that, in the hands of an archer, could split a helmet as though it were made of parchment, while the head of the ax was a spike thin enough to pierce the slits of a knight’s visor. The upper shaft of each ax was sheathed in iron so an opponent could not cut through the handle. “Beautiful,” Sir John said when the first weapons were delivered. He stroked the iron-clad handle as though it were a woman’s flank. “Just beautiful.”

By late spring the news came that God had done His duty by persuading the king to make an invasion of France and so Sir John’s company marched south on roads lined with the white blossom of hawthorn hedges. Sir John was cheerful, animated by the prospect of war. He rode ahead, followed by his pages, his squire, and a standard-bearer who carried the flag of the crowned red lion with its golden star. Three carts bore provisions, short lances, armor, spare bowstaves, and sheaves of arrows. The road south led through woods that were thickly hazed with bluebells and past fields where the year’s first hay had already been cut and was laid to dry in long rows. Newly shorn sheep looked naked and thin in the meadows. More bands of men joined the road, all horsemen, all in strange livery, and all going toward the south coast where the king had summoned the men who had signed his jaggedly cut contracts. Most of the horsemen, Hook noted, were archers, outnumbering the men-at-arms by three to one. The long bows were stored in leather cases that were slung over their owners’ shoulders.

Hook was happy. Sir John’s men were his companions now. Peter Goddington, the centenar, was a fair man, tough with laggards, but warm in his approval of the men who shared his dream of creating the best company of archers in England. Thomas Evelgold was next in command and he, like Goddington, was an older man, almost thirty. He was a morose man, slower thinking than the centenar, but he was grudgingly helpful to the younger archers among whom Hook found his particular friends. There were the twins, Thomas and Matthew Scarlet, both a year younger than Hook, and Will of the Dale who could reduce the company to helpless laughter with his imitations of Sir John. The four drank together, ate together, laughed together, and competed against each other, though it was recognized among all the archers that none could outshoot Nicholas Hook. They had practiced with weapons all winter and now France was ahead and God was on their side. Father Christopher had assured them of that in a sermon preached the day before they rode. “Our lord the king’s quarrel with the French is just,” Father Christopher had said with unusual seriousness, “and our God will not abandon him. We go to right a wrong, and the forces of heaven will march with us!” Hook did not understand the quarrel except that somewhere in the king’s ancestry was a marriage that led Henry to the French throne, and perhaps he was the rightful king and perhaps he was not, but Hook did not care. He was just happy to wear the Cornewaille lion and star.

And he was happy that Melisande was one of the women chosen to ride with the company. She had a small, fine-boned mare that belonged to Sir John’s wife, the sister of the late king, and she rode it well. “We must take women with us,” Sir John had explained.

“God is merciful,” Father Christopher had murmured.

“We can’t wash our own clothes!” Sir John had said. “We can’t sew! We can’t cook! We must have women! Useful things, women. We don’t want to be like the French! Humping each other when a sheep isn’t available, so we’ll take women!” He liked Melisande to ride alongside him and chatted away to her in French, making her laugh.

“He does not really hate the French,” Melisande told Hook on the evening that they arrived near a town with a large abbey. The abbey bell was summoning the faithful to prayer, but Hook did not move. He and Melisande were sitting beside a small river that flowed placidly through lush water meadows. Across the river, two fields away, another company of men-at-arms and archers was making camp. The fires of Sir John’s men were already burning, hazing the trees and the distant abbey tower with smoke. “He just likes to be rude about the French,” Melisande said.

“About everyone.”

“He is kind inside,” Melisande said, then leaned back to rest her head on his chest. When standing she barely reached his shoulder. Hook loved the fragility of her looks, though he knew that apparent frailty was deceptive for he had learned that Melisande had the supple strength of a bowstave and, like a bow that had followed the string and so been bent into a permanent curve even when unstrung, she possessed fiercely held opinions. He loved that in her. He also feared for her.

“Maybe you shouldn’t come,” Hook said.

“Why? Because it is dangerous?”

“Yes.”

Melisande shrugged. “It is safer to be French in France than to be English, I think. If they capture Alice or Matilda then they will be raped.” Alice and Matilda were her particular friends.

“And you won’t be?” Hook asked.

Melisande said nothing for a while, perhaps thinking of Soissons. “I want to come,” she finally said.

“Why?”

“To be with you,” she said, as though the answer were obvious. “What’s a centenar?”

“Like Peter Goddington? Just a man who leads archers.”

“And a ventenar?”

“Well, a centenar leads a whole lot of archers, maybe a hundred? And a ventenar is in charge of perhaps twenty of them. They’re all sergeants.”

Melisande thought about that for a few seconds. “You should be a ventenar, Nick.”

Hook smiled, but said nothing. The river was crystal clear as it flowed over a sandy bed where water crowsfoot and cress waved languidly. Mayflies were dancing and, every now and then, a splash betrayed a feeding trout. Two swans and four cygnets swam beside the far bank and, as Hook watched them, he saw a shadow stir in the water beneath. “Don’t move,” he warned Melisande and, moving very slowly, took the cased bow from his shoulder.

“Sir John knows my father,” Melisande said suddenly.

“He does?” Hook asked, surprised. He unlaced the leather case and gently slid the bow free.

“Ghillebert,” Melisande said the name slowly, as if it was unfamiliar, “the Seigneur de Lanferelle.”

Father Michel, in France, had said Melisande’s father was the Seigneur d’Enfer, but Hook supposed he had misheard. “He’s a lord, eh?” he remarked.

“Lords have many children,” Melisande said, “et je suis une b#226;tarde.”

Hook said nothing. He braced the bowstave against the bole of an ash tree and bent the yew to loop the string over the upper nock.

“I am a bastard,” Melisande said bitterly. “That is why he put me in the nunnery.”

“To hide you.”

“And protect me, I think,” Melisande said. “He paid money to the abbess. He paid for my food and bed. He said I would be safe there.”

“Safe to be a servant girl?”

“My mother was a servant girl. Why not me? And I would have become a nun one day.”

“You’re not a servant girl,” Hook said, “you’re a lord’s daughter.” He took an arrow from his bag, choosing a bodkin with its long, sharp, and heavy head. He was holding the bow horizontally on his lap and now laid the arrow on the stave and notched the feathered end on the string. The shadow stirred. “How well do you know your father?” Hook asked.

“I have only met him twice,” Melisande said. “Once when I was small, and I do not remember that well, and then before I went to the nunnery. I liked him.” She paused, searching for the right English words. “In the beginning, I liked him.”

“Did he like you?” Hook asked carelessly, concentrating on the shadow rather than on Melisande. He was drawing the bow now, still holding it horizontally and unwilling to raise it vertically in case the movement sent the shadow fast upstream.

“He was so,” she paused, looking for the word, “beau. He was tall. And he has a beautiful badge. He wears a great yellow sun with golden rays. And on the sun there is the head of…”

“An eagle,” Hook interrupted.

“Un faucon,” Melisande said.

“A falcon then,” Hook said, and remembered the long-haired man who had watched the archers being murdered in front of the church of Saint Antoine-le-Petit. “He was in Soissons,” he said harshly. He had paused with the bow partially drawn. The shadow drifted in the water and Hook thought it would vanish downstream, then it flicked its tail and was back under the far bank.

Melisande was staring up at Hook. “He was there?”

“Long black hair,” Hook said.

“I did not see him!”

“You had your head buried in my shoulder most of the time,” Hook said. “You didn’t want to look. They were torturing men. Taking their eyes. Cutting them.”

Melisande was silent a long time. Hook raised the bow slightly, then she spoke again, but in a smaller voice. “My father is called something else,” she said, “le Seigneur d’Enfer.”

“That’s the name I heard,” Hook said.

“Le Seigneur d’Enfer,” Melisande said again. “The lord of hell. It is because Lanferelle sounds like l’enfer, and l’enfer is hell, but maybe because he is so fierce in a fight. He has sent many men to hell, I think. And some to heaven too.”

Swallows flickered fast over the river and, from the corner of his eye, Hook saw the brilliant blue flash of a kingfisher’s flight. The shadow was unmoving again. He drew the cord further back, unable to pull it to the full extent because Melisande’s slender body obstructed him, but even at half draw the great war bow was a dreadful weapon.

“He is not a bad man,” Melisande said as though she tried to persuade herself of that fact.

“You don’t sound very certain,” Hook said.

“He is my father.”

“Who put you in a nunnery.”

“I did not want to go!” she said fiercely. “I told him! No! No!”

Hook smiled. “You didn’t want to be a nun, eh?”

“I knew the sisters. My mother would take me to visit them. We gave them,” she paused, looking for the English words and failing to find them, “les prunes de damas, abricots et coings.” She shrugged. “I do not know what those things are. Fruit? We gave the sisters fruit, but they were never kind to us. They were horrid.”

“But your father sent you there anyway,” Hook said.

“He said I should pray for him. That was my duty. But you know what I prayed for instead? I prayed he would come for me one day,” she said wistfully, “that he would ride on his great horse through the convent gate and take me away.”

“Is that why you want to go to France?”

She shook her head. “I want to be with you.”

“Your father won’t like me.”

She dismissed that with a shrug. “Why should he ever see us again?”

Hook aimed just beneath the shadow, though he was not thinking about his aim. Instead he was thinking about a tall man with long black hair who did nothing to stop torture and agony. He was thinking about the lord of hell. “Supper,” he said harshly, and released the cord.

The arrow leaped off the string, its white feathers bright in the sinking sun. It slashed into the water and there was a sudden thrashing, a churning turmoil that sent trout exploding upstream, and the thrashing went on as Hook jumped into the river.

The pike had been spitted by the arrow that had pinned it to the river’s far bank, and Hook had to pull hard to yank the shaft free. He carried the fish back. It twisted on the arrow and tried to bite him, but once on the western bank he rapped its skull with the hilt of his knife and the huge fish died instantly. It was almost as long as his bow, a great dark hunter with savage teeth.

“Un brochet!” Melisande said with delight.

“A pike,” Hook said, “and there’s good eating on a pike.” He gutted the fish on the bank, spilling the offal back into the river.

Next day Sir John led a contingent of men-at-arms and archers westward to buy grain, dried peas, and smoked meat, and Sir John gave Hook the easy duty, which was to stay in a village under a fold of the hills and to guard the sacks and barrels that were being piled on a wagon, which stood outside a tavern called the Mouse and Cheese. The wagon’s two draft horses were picketed on the village green. Hook’s bow, unstrung, lay on an outside table beside the pot of ale that the tavern keeper had given him, but Hook was up on the wagon bed, pounding flour into a barrel. Father Christopher, dressed in shirt, breeches, and boots, wandered aimlessly, peering into the cottages, petting cats, and teasing the women who washed clothes in the stream that edged the village’s one street. He finally came back to the Mouse and Cheese and dropped a small bag of silver coins onto the table. It was the priest’s job to pay for any food that a farmer or villager might wish to sell. “Why are you hitting the flour, young Hook?” the priest asked.

“I’m packing it down tight, father. Salt, hazel, and flour!”

Father Christopher gave an exaggerated grimace of distaste. “You’re salting the flour?”

“There’s a layer of salt at the bottom of the barrel,” Hook explained, “to stop the flour getting damp, and I add the hazel to keep it fresh.” He showed Father Christopher some hazel wands he had plucked from a hedge and stripped of their leaves.

“And that works?” the priest asked.

“Of course it does! Did you never fetch flour from a mill?”

“Hook!” the priest protested, “I’m a man of God. We don’t actually work!” He laughed.

Hook thrust another pair of wands into the barrel, then stood back and dusted his hands. “Aye, well that’s a good piece of work,” he said, nodding at the flour.

Father Christopher smiled benignly, then leaned back and gazed at the sunlit woods climbing the hills above the thatched roofs. “God, I love England,” he said, “and God knows why young Hal wants France.”

“Because he’s the King of France,” Hook said.

Father Christopher shrugged. “He’s got a claim, Hook, but so do others. If I were King of England I’d stay here. Is this your ale?”

“It is, father.”

“Be a Christian and give me some.” Father Christopher said, then raised the pot in Hook’s direction and drank from it. “But to France we go, and doubtless we’ll win!”

“We will?”

“Only God knows the answer to that, Hook,” Father Christopher said, suddenly thoughtful. “There’s a powerful lot of Frenchmen! And if they stop quarreling among themselves and turn on us? Still, we have these things,” he slapped Hook’s bow, “and they don’t.”

“Can I ask you something, father?” Hook said, climbing down from the wagon and sitting beside the priest.

“Oh, for Christ’s blessed sake don’t ask me which side God is on.”

“You told us He was on our side!”

“True, Hook, I did, and there are thousands of French priests saying the same thing to the French!” Father Christopher grinned. “Let me give you some priestly advice, Hook. Put your trust in the yew bow, my boy, and not in any priest’s words.”

Hook touched the bow, feeling the slick tallow he had rubbed into the wood. “What do you know about Saint Crispinian, father?”

“Oh, a theological inquiry,” Father Christopher said. He drank the rest of Hook’s ale, then rapped the pot on the table as a signal that he needed more. “Not sure I remember much! I didn’t really study as I should at Oxford. There were too many girls I liked.” He smiled for a moment. “There was a brothel there, Hook, where all the girls dressed as nuns. You could hardly get inside the house because of priests! I met the Bishop of Oxford there at least half a dozen times. Happy days.” He sighed and gave Hook a sideways grin. “So, what do I know? Well, Crispinian had a brother called Crispin, though not everyone says they were brothers. Some say they were noblemen, and some say they weren’t. They might have been shoemakers, which doesn’t sound like a nobleman’s occupation, does it? They were certainly Romans. They lived about a thousand years ago, Hook, and of course they were martyred.”

“So Crispinian’s in heaven,” Hook said.

“He and his brother live on the right hand of God,” Father Christopher confirmed, “where I hope they get quicker service than I do!” He rapped the table again, and a girl came running from the tavern door to be greeted with a wide priestly smile. “More ale, my lovely darling,” Father Christopher said, and rolled one of Sir John’s coins down the table. “Two pots, my sweet,” he smiled again, then sighed when the girl had gone. “Oh, I wish I were young again.”

“You are young, father.”

“Dear God, I’m forty-three! I’ll be dead soon! I’ll be as dead as Crispinian, but he was a hard man to kill.”

“He was?”

Father Christopher frowned. “I’m trying to remember. He and Crispin were tortured because they were Christians. They were racked, and they had nails driven under their fingernails, and strips of flesh cut out of them, but none of that killed them! They were singing God’s praises to the torturers all the time! Not sure I could be that brave.” He made the sign of the cross, then smiled as the girl put down the ale. He waved off the coins she offered as change.

“So there they were,” he went on, enjoying his tale, “and the man who was torturing them decided to finish them off quickly, maybe because he was tired of hearing them sing, so he tied millstones around their necks and threw them into a river. But that didn’t work either because the millstones floated! So the torturer had them pulled out of the river and threw them onto a fire! And even that didn’t kill them. They went on singing and the fire wouldn’t touch them, and God filled the torturer with despair and the wretched man threw himself on the fire instead. He burned, but the two saints lived.”

A small group of horsemen appeared at the end of the village street. Hook glanced at them, but none was wearing Sir John Cornewaille’s livery, so he turned back to the priest.

“God had saved the brothers from the torture and from the drowning and from the fire,” Father Christopher said, “but for some reason He let them die anyway. They had their heads chopped off by the emperor, and that stopped them singing. It would, wouldn’t it?”

“But it was still a miracle,” Hook said in wonderment.

“It was a miracle they survived so long,” Father Christopher agreed. “But why are you so interested in Crispinian? He’s really a French saint, not ours. He and his brother went to France, see? To do their work.”

Hook hesitated, not sure whether he wanted to confess that a headless saint talked to him, but before he could decide either way a voice sneered. “God’s belly!” the voice said, “look who we have here! Master Nicholas Hook!”

Hook looked up to see Sir Martin leering triumphantly from his horse. There were eight horsemen and all but Sir Martin were wearing Lord Slayton’s moon and stars. Thomas Perrill and his brother Robert were among the riders, as was Lord Slayton’s centenar, William Snoball. Hook knew them all.

“Friends of yours?” Father Christopher asked.

“I thought you were dead, Hook,” Sir Martin said. He was in a priest’s robe that was tucked up so his skinny legs could straddle the horse and, though priests were forbidden to carry edged weapons, he wore an old-fashioned sword with a wide crosspiece on the hilt. “I hoped you were dead,” he added, “doomed, damned and dead.” His long face grimaced in what might have been a smile.

“I live,” Hook said curtly.

“And you wear another man’s livery,” Sir Martin said, “which is not right, Hook, not right at all. It defies law and the scriptures, and Lord Slayton will not like it. Is this yours?” He pointed to the wagon.

“It is ours,” Father Christopher answered pleasantly.

Sir Martin appeared to notice Father Christopher for the first time. He peered intensely at the gray-haired man for a few heartbeats, then shook his head. “I don’t know you,” he said, “and I don’t need to know you. I need food. That’s why we came, and there,” he pointed a bony finger at the wagon, “is food. Manna from heaven. As God sent ravens to feed Elijah the Tishbite, so He has sent us Hook.” He found that amusing and laughed to himself, and in the laughter was the cackle of madness.

“But that food is ours,” Father Christopher said as though he spoke to a small child.

“But he,” Sir Martin sneered, pointing at Hook, “he, he, he,” and with each repetition he stabbed his finger toward Hook, “that piece of shit beside you, is Lord Slayton’s man. And he is an outlaw.”

Father Christopher turned a surprised face on Hook. “Are you?” he asked.

Hook nodded, said nothing.

“Well, well,” Father Christopher said mildly.

“An outlaw can possess nothing,” Sir Martin rasped, “which is the commandment of the scriptures, so that food is ours.”

“I think not,” Father Christopher replied calmly, smiling.

“You may think what you like,” Sir Martin said with a sudden vehemence, “because we’ll take it anyway, and we’ll take him.” He pointed to Hook.

“You know the livery?” Father Christopher asked gently, gesturing at Hook’s surcoat.

“An outlaw can wear no livery,” Sir Martin said. He looked happy as he anticipated the pleasure of Hook’s death. “Tom?” he twisted in the saddle to look at the older Perrill brother, “rip that surcoat off him, tie his hands tight and bring him.”

William Snoball had an arrow on his string. The rest of Sir Martin’s archers followed his example so that half a dozen arrows were pointed at Hook as Tom Perrill slid from the saddle. “Been waiting to do this,” Perrill said. His face, long-nosed and lantern-jawed like Sir Martin’s, was lit by a grin. “Do we hang him here, Sir Martin?”

“It would save Lord Slayton the trouble of a trial, wouldn’t it?” the priest said. “And remove from his lordship the temptation of mercy.” He cackled again.

Father Christopher held up a slim hand in warning, but Tom Perrill ignored the gesture. He came around the table and was just reaching for Hook when he was stopped by the sound of a sword scraping through a scabbard’s throat.

Sir Martin turned.

A single horseman watched the scene from the edge of the village. There were more horsemen behind him, but they had evidently been ordered to wait.

“I really would advise you,” Father Christopher said very mildly, “to take those arrows off their strings.”

None of the archers followed his advice. They glanced nervously at Sir Martin, but Sir Martin seemed not to know what to do, and just then the lone horseman touched his spurs to his stallion’s flanks.

“Sir Martin!” William Snoball appealed for orders.

But Sir Martin said nothing. He merely watched as the man-at-arms spurred toward him, the stallion’s hooves spewing puffs of dust as it cantered, and the rider drew back his sword arm and then, as he galloped past, swept once.

The flat of the blade smacked across Robert Perrill’s skull. The archer, whose selection had been random, toppled slowly from the saddle to drop heavily onto the street. The arrow, released by his nerveless hand, thumped into the tavern’s wall, half drilling through it. It had missed Hook by inches. Tom Perrill turned to help his brother, who stirred groggily in the dust, then went still as Sir John Cornewaille wheeled his horse. Sir John spurred again, and now Sir Martin’s archers hurriedly took the arrows off their strings. Sir John slowed the stallion, then curbed it.

“Greetings, Sir John,” Father Christopher said happily.

“What’s happening?” Sir John asked harshly.

Robert Perrill staggered to his feet, the right side of his head sheeted with blood. Tom Perrill was unmoving now, his eyes fixed on the sword that had struck his brother.

Father Christopher drank some ale, then wiped his lips. “These men, Sir John,” he waved at Sir Martin and his archers, “expressed a desire to take our food. I did advise them against such a course, but they insisted the food was theirs because it was under the protection of young Hook here and, according to this holy priest, Hook is an outlaw.”

“He is,” Sir Martin found his voice, “deemed so by law and doomed thereby!”

“I know he’s an outlaw,” Sir John said flatly, “and so did the king when he gave Hook to me. Are you saying the king made a mistake?”

Sir Martin glanced at Hook with surprise, but held his ground. “He is an outlaw,” he insisted, “and Lord Slayton’s man.”

“He is my man,” Sir John said.

“He is…” Sir Martin began, then faltered under Sir John’s gaze.

“He is my man,” Sir John said again, his voice dangerous now, “he fights for me, and that means I fight for him. You know who I am?” Sir John waited for an acknowledgment from the priest, but Sir Martin’s gaze had dissolved into vagueness and he was now staring into the sky as though he were communing with angels. “Tell his lordship,” Sir John went on, “to discuss the matter with me.”

“We will, sir, we will,” William Snoball answered after glancing at Sir Martin.

“Elijah the Tishbite,” Sir Martin spoke suddenly, “ate bread and flesh by the brook Cherith. Did you know that?” This question was asked earnestly of Sir John who merely looked bemused. “The brook Cherith,” Sir Martin said as though he imparted a great secret, “is where a man may hide himself.”

“Jesus wept,” Sir John said.

“And no wonder,” Father Christopher sighed. Then he gently lifted Hook’s bow and slammed it hard down onto the table and the abrupt noise made the horses twitch and snapped Sir Martin’s eyes into comprehension. “I forgot to mention,” Father Christopher said, smiling seraphically at Sir Martin, “that I am also a priest. So let me offer you a blessing.” He pulled out a golden crucifix that had been hidden beneath his shirt and held it toward Lord Slayton’s men. “May the peace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he said, “comfort and sustain you while you take your farting mouths and your turd-reeking presence out of our sight.” He waved a sketchy cross toward the horsemen. “And thus farewell.”

Tom Perrill stared at Hook. For a moment it seemed his hatred might conquer his caution, but then he twisted away and helped his brother remount. Sir Martin, his face dreamy again, allowed William Snoball to lead him away. The other horsemen followed.

Sir John dropped from his saddle, took Hook’s ale, and drained it. “Remind me why you were outlawed, Hook?”

“Because I hit a priest, Sir John,” Hook admitted.

“That priest?” Sir John asked, jerking a thumb toward the retreating horsemen.

“Yes, Sir John.”

Sir John shook his head. “You did wrong, Hook, you did very wrong. You shouldn’t have hit him.”

“No, Sir John,” Hook said humbly.

“You should have slit the goddam bastard’s putrid bowels open and ripped his heart out through his stinking arse,” Sir John said, looking at Father Christopher as if hoping his words might offend the priest, but Father Christopher merely smiled. “Is the bastard mad?” Sir John demanded.

“Famously,” Father Christopher said, “but so were half the saints and most of the prophets. I can’t think you’d want to go hawking with Jeremiah, Sir John?”

“Damn Jeremiah,” Sir John said, “and damn London. I’m summoned there again, father. The king demands it.”

“May God bless your going forth, Sir John, and your returning hence.”

“And if King Harry doesn’t make peace,” Sir John said, “I’ll be back soon. Very soon.”

“There’ll be no peace,” Father Christopher said confidently. “The bow is drawn and the arrow yearns to fly.”

“Let’s hope it does. I need the money a good war will bring.”

“I shall pray for war, then,” Father Christopher said lightly.

“For months now,” Sir John said, “I’ve prayed for nothing else.”

And now, Hook thought, Sir John’s prayers were being answered. Because soon, very soon, they would be sailing to war. They would sail to play the devil’s game. They would sail to France. They were going to fight.