“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.
&
nbsp; 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.
PART TWO
Normandy
Agincourt Page 12
