The monk began to protest, speaking too quickly for Hook to understand any of his words. He spoke loudly too. “Shut your face,” Hook said, and the monk, as if in response, began to shout his protests, so Hook hit him once and the monk’s head snapped back and blood sprang from his nose, and he went instantly quiet. He was a young man who now looked very scared.
“I told you to shut your face,” Hook said. “You three, whistle! Whistle loud!”
William, Matthew, and Thomas whistled “Robin Hood’s Lament” as Hook led the prisoner and horse back along the road that lay sunken between two tree-shrouded banks. The track curved to the left to reveal a great stone building with a tower. It looked like a church. “Une église?” he asked the monk.
“Un monastère,” the monk said sullenly.
“Keep whistling,” Hook said.
“What did he say?” Tom Scarlet asked.
“He said it’s a monastery. Now whistle!”
Smoke came from a chimney of the monastery, explaining the smell that had haunted Hook as they climbed the hill. No one else from the landing party was in sight yet, but as Hook led his small party toward the building a gate opened and a wash of lantern light revealed a group of monks standing in the gateway. “Arrows on strings,” Hook said, “and keep goddam whistling, for God’s sake.”
A tall, thin, gray-haired man, robed in black, advanced down the track. “Je suis le prieur,” he announced himself.
“What did he say?” Tom Scarlet asked.
“He says he’s the prior,” Hook said, “just keep whistling.”
The prior reached out a hand as if to take the bloodied monk, but Hook turned on him and the tall man stepped hastily back. The other monks began to protest, but then more archers came from the woods and Sir John Holland and his stepfather appeared around the priory’s edge with the men-at-arms.
“Well done, Hook!” Sir John Cornewaille shouted, “got yourself a horse!”
“And a monk, Sir John,” Hook said. “He was riding for help, leastways I think he was.”
Sir John strode to Hook’s side. The prior made the sign of the cross as the men-at-arms filled the road in front of the monastery, then stepped toward Sir John and made a voluble complaint that involved frequent gestures at Hook and at the bleeding monk. Sir John tipped up the wounded man’s face to inspect the broken nose by moonlight. “They must have sent a warning of our arrival yesterday,” he said, “so this man was plainly sent to tell someone we were landing. Did you hit him, Hook?”
“Hit him, Sir John?” Hook asked, playing dumb while he thought what answer would serve him best.
“The prior says you hit him,” Sir John said accusingly.
Hook’s instinct was to lie, just as he had always lied when faced with such accusations, but he did not want to sour his service to Sir John with untruths so he nodded. “I did, Sir John,” he said.
Sir John’s face showed a hint of a smile. “That’s a pity, Hook. Our king has said he’ll hang any man who hurts a priest, a nun, or a monk. He’s very pious is our Henry, so I want you to think very carefully about your answer. Did you hit him, Hook?”
“Oh no, Sir John,” Hook said. “I wouldn’t dream of doing that.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” Sir John said, “he just tumbled out of his saddle, didn’t he? And he fell right onto his nose.” He blandly offered that explanation to the prior before pushing the bloody-nosed monk toward his brethren. “Archers,” Sir John said, turning to his men, “I want you all on the skyline, there,” he pointed eastward, “and stay on the road. I’ll take the horse, Hook.”
The archers waited on the road, which fell away in front of them before rising to another tree-covered crest. The stars were fading as the dawn smeared the east. Peter Goddington gave permission for some men to sleep as others kept watch and Hook made a bed on a mossy bank and must have slept an hour before more hoofbeats woke him. It was full light now and the sun was streaming through green leaves. A dozen horsemen were on the road, one of them Sir John Cornewaille. The horses were shivering and skittish and Hook guessed they had just been swum ashore and were still uncertain of their footing. “On to the next ridge!” Sir John shouted at the archers and Hook hastily picked up his arrow bag and cased bow. He followed the archers eastward, and the men-at-arms, in no apparent hurry, walked their horses behind.
The view from the farther ridge was astonishing. To Hook’s right the sea narrowed toward the Seine’s mouth. The river’s southern bank was all low wooded hills. To the north were more hills, but in front of Hook, glinting under the morning sun, the road fell away through woods and fields to a town and its harbor. The harbor was small, crammed with ships, and protected by the town walls that were built clear around the port, leaving only a narrow entrance leading to a slender channel that twisted to the sea. Behind the port was the town itself, all roofs and churches ringed by a great stone wall that was obscured in places by houses that had been built outside its perimeter. The houses, which spread out on all sides of the town, could not hide the great towers that studded the wall. Hook counted the towers. Twenty-four. Banners hung from the towers and from the walls in between. The archers were much too far away to see the flags, but the message of the banners was obvious: the town knew the English had landed and was proclaiming its defiance.
“Harfleur,” Sir John Cornewaille announced to the archers. “A nest of goddamned pirates! They’re villains who live there, boys! They raid our shipping, raid our coast, and we’re going to scour them out of that town like rats out of a granary!”
Hook could see more now. He could see a river looping through fields to Harfleur’s north. The river evidently ran clear through the town, entering under a great arch and flowing through the houses to empty itself in the walled harbor. But the citizens of Harfleur, warned the previous day of the coming of the English, must have dammed the archway so that the river was now flooding to spread a great lake about the town’s northern and western sides. Harfleur, under that morning sun, looked like a walled island.
A crossbow bolt seared overhead. Hook had seen the flicker of its first appearance, down and to his left, meaning that whoever had shot the bolt was in the woods north of the road. The bolt landed somewhere in the trees behind.
“Someone doesn’t like us,” one of the mounted men-at-arms said lightly.
“Anyone see where it came from?” another rider demanded sharply.
Hook and a half-dozen other archers all pointed to the same patch of dense trees and undergrowth. The road dropped in front of them, then ran level for a hundred paces to the lip of a shelf before falling again toward the flood-besieged town, and the crossbowman was somewhere on that wide wooded ledge.
“I don’t suppose he’ll go away,” Sir John Cornewaille remarked mildly.
“There may be more than one?” someone else suggested.
“Just one, I think,” Sir John said. “Hook? You want to fetch the wretched man for me?”
Hook ran to his left, plunged into the trees, then turned down the short slope. He reached the wide ledge and there went more slowly, picking his way carefully to keep from making a noise. He had strung his bow. In thick trees the bow was a dubious weapon, but he did not want to encounter a crossbowman without having an arrow on the string.
The wood was oak, ash, and a few maples. The undergrowth was hawthorn and holly, and there was mistletoe growing high in the oaks, something Hook noted for he rarely saw it sprouting from oak in England. His grandmother had valued oak mistletoe, using it in a score of medicines she had made for the villagers, and even for Lord Slayton when the ague struck him. Her chief use for the mistletoe had been the treatment of barren women for which she had pounded the small berries with mangrove root, the whole moistened with the urine of a mother. There had been a fecund woman in the village, Mary Carter, who had given birth to fifteen healthy children, and Hook had often been sent with a pot to request her urine, and once he had been beaten by his grandmother for coming back with t
he pot empty because she had refused to believe that Mary Carter was away from home. The next time Hook had pissed in the pot himself and his grandmother had never noticed the difference.
He was thinking about that, and wondering whether Melisande would become pregnant, when he heard the fierce, quick sound of a crossbow being shot. The noise was close. He crouched, crept forward, and suddenly saw the shooter. It was a boy, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, who was grunting slightly as he worked the crank to span his weapon. The head of the bow had a stirrup in which the boy had placed his foot, and at its butt was the socket where he had fitted the two handles that turned to wind back the cord. It was hard work and the boy was grimacing with the effort of inching the thick cord up the weapon’s stock. He was concentrating so hard that he did not notice Hook until the archer picked him up by the scruff of his coat. The boy beat at Hook, then yelped as he was slapped around the head.
“You’re a rich one, aren’t you?” Hook said. The boy’s coat, which Hook was holding by the collar, was of finely woven woolen cloth. His breeches and shoes were expensive, and his crossbow, which Hook scooped up with his right hand, looked as though it had been made specially for the boy because it was much smaller than a man’s bow. The stock was walnut and beautifully inlaid with silver and ivory chasings that depicted a deer hunt in a forest. “They’ll probably hang you, boy,” Hook said cheerfully, and walked out to the road with the boy tucked under his left arm and his own bow and the valuable crossbow held in his right. He climbed back up the hill to where grinning archers lined the ridge and mounted men-at-arms blocked the road. “Here’s the enemy, Sir John!” Hook said cheerfully, dropping the boy beside Sir John’s horse.
“A brave enemy,” a horseman said admiringly and Hook looked up to see the king. Henry was in plate armor and wore a surcoat showing his royal arms. He wore a helmet ringed with a golden crown, though his visor was lifted to reveal his long-nosed face with its deep dark pit of a scar. Hook dropped to his knees and dragged the boy down with him.
“Votre nom?” the king demanded of the boy, who did not answer, but just glared up at Henry. Hook cuffed him around the head again.
“Philippe,” the boy said sullenly.
“Philippe?” Henry asked, “just Philippe?”
“Philippe de Rouelles,” the boy answered, defiant now.
“It seems that Master Philippe is the only man in France who dares face us!” the king said loudly enough for everyone on the hilltop to hear. “He shoots two crossbow bolts at us! You try to kill your own king, boy,” Henry went on, speaking French again, “and I am king here. I am King of Normandy, King of Aquitaine, King of Picardy, and King of France. I am your king.” He swung his leg over the saddle and dropped to the grass. A squire spurred forward to take the reins of the king’s horse as Henry took two steps to stand above Philippe de Rouelles. “You tried to kill your king,” he said, and drew his sword. The blade made a hissing noise as it scraped through the scabbard’s throat. “What do you do with a boy who tries to kill a king?” Henry demanded loudly.
“You kill him, sire,” a horseman growled.
The king’s blade rose. Philippe was shaking and his eyes were tear-bright, but his face was still stubbornly defiant. Then he flinched as the blade flashed down.
It stopped an inch above his shoulder. Henry smiled. He tapped the blade once, then tapped it again on the boy’s other shoulder. “You’re a brave subject,” he said lightly. “Rise, Sir Philippe.” The horsemen laughed as Hook hauled the wide-eyed boy to his feet.
Henry was wearing a golden chain about his neck from which hung a thick ivory pendant decorated with an antelope made of jet. The antelope was another of his personal badges, though Hook, seeing the badge, neither knew what the beast was nor that it was the king’s private insignia. Henry now lifted the chain from his neck and draped it over Philippe’s head. “A keepsake of a day on which you should have died, boy,” Henry said. Philippe said nothing, but just looked from the rich gift to the man who had given it to him. “Your father is the Sire of Rouelles?” the king asked.
“Yes, lord,” Philippe said in a voice scarce more than a whisper.
“Then tell your father his rightful king has come and that his king is merciful. Now go, Sir Philippe.” Henry dropped his sword back into its black scabbard. The boy glanced at the crossbow in Hook’s hand. “No, no,” the king said, “we keep your bow. Your punishment will be whatever your father deems appropriate for its loss. Let him go,” the king ordered Hook. He appeared not to recognize the archer with whom he had spoken in the Tower.
Henry watched the boy run down the slope, then climbed back into his saddle. “The French send a lad to do their work,” he said sourly.
“And when he grows, sire,” Sir John said equally sourly, “we’ll have to kill him.”
“He is our subject,” the king said loudly, “and this is our land! These people are ours!” He stared at Harfleur for a long time. The town might be his by right, but the folk inside had a different opinion. Their gates were shut, their walls were hung with defiant banners, and their valley was flooded. Harfleur, it seemed, was determined to fight.
“Let’s get the army ashore,” Henry said.
And the fight for France had begun.
The army began to come ashore on Thursday, August fifteenth, the feast of Saint Alipius, and it took till Saturday, the feast of Saint Agapetus, until the last man, horse, gun, and cargo had been brought to the boulder-strewn beach. The horses staggered when they were swum ashore. They whinnied and cavorted, eyes white, until grooms calmed them. Archers cut a wider road up from the beach to the monastery where the king had his quarters. Henry spent hours on the beach, encouraging and chivvying the work, or else he rode to the crest where Philippe de Rouelles had tried to kill him and from there he stared eastward at Harfleur. Sir John Cornewaille’s men guarded the ridge, but no French came to drive the English back into the sea. A few horsemen rode from the town, but they stayed well out of bowshot, content to gaze at the enemy on the skyline.
The flood waters spread about Harfleur. Some of the houses built outside the walls were flooded so that only their rooftops showed above the water, but two wide stretches of dry ground remained in the base of the bowl where the town sat. The nearer stretch led to one of Harfleur’s three gates and, from his aerie high on the hill, Hook could see the enemy making the finishing touches to a huge bastion that protected that gate. The bastion was like a small castle blocking the road, so that any attack on the gate would first have to take that new and massive fortification.
On the Friday afternoon, the feast of Saint Hyacinth, Hook and a dozen men were sent to retrieve Sir John’s last horses, which were swum ashore from the Lady of Falmouth. The animals floundered on the shingle and the archers ran ropes through their bridles to keep them together. Melisande had come with Hook and she stroked the nose of Dell, her small piebald mare that had been a gift from Sir John’s wife. She murmured soothing words to the mare. “That horse don’t speak French, Melisande!” Matthew Scarlet said, “she’s an English mare!”
“She’s learning French,” Melisande said.
“Language of the devil,” William of the Dale said in his imitation of Sir John, and the other archers laughed. Matthew Scarlet, one of the twins, was leading Lucifer, Sir John’s big battle-charger, who now lunged away from him. One of Sir John’s grooms ran to help. Hook had a leading rein with eight horses attached and he pulled them toward Melisande, intending to add Dell to his string. He called her name, but Melisande was staring up the beach, frowning, and Hook looked to see where she was gazing.
A group of men-at-arms was kneeling on the stones as a priest prayed and for a moment he thought that was what had caught her eye, then he saw a second priest just beyond one of the great boulders. It was Sir Martin, and with him were the Perrill brothers, and the three men were looking at Melisande, and Hook had the impression, no more, that they had made obscene gestures. “Melisande,” he said, and she
turned to him.
Sir Martin grinned. He was gazing at Hook now and he slowly lifted his right hand and folded back his fingers so that only the longest finger protruded, and then, still slowly, he slipped his left fist over that one finger and, holding his hands together, made the sign of the cross toward Hook and Melisande. “Bastard,” Hook said softly.
“Who is it?” Melisande asked.
“They’re enemies,” Hook said. The Perrill brothers were laughing.
Tom and Matthew Scarlet came to stand with Hook. “You know them?” Tom Scarlet asked.
“I know them.”
Sir Martin again made the sign of the cross before turning away in response to a shout. “He’s a priest?” Tom Scarlet asked in a tone of disbelief.
“A priest,” Hook said, “a rapist and gentry born. But he was bitten by the devil’s dog and he’s dangerous.”
“And you know him?”
“I know him,” Hook said, then turned on the twins. “You all look after Melisande,” he said fiercely.
“We do,” Matthew Scarlet said, “you know that.”
“What did he want?” Melisande asked.
“You,” Hook said, and that night he gave her the small crossbow and its bag of bolts. “Practice with it,” he said.
Next day, on the feast of Saint Agapetus, the eight great guns were hauled up from the beach. One gun, which was named the King’s Daughter, needed two wagons for its massive hooped barrel which was longer than three bowstaves and had a gaping mouth large enough to take a barrel of ale. The other cannon were smaller, but all needed teams of over twenty horses to drag them to the hilltop.
Patrols rode north, bringing back supplies and commandeering farm wagons that would carry the provisions and tents and arrows and newly felled oaks, which would be trimmed and shaped to make the catapults that would add their missiles to the shaped gun-stones that all had to be carried up the hill by yet more wagons. But, at last, the whole army and all its horses and all its supplies was ashore, and under a bright afternoon sun the cumbersome wagons were lined on the road beside the monastery and the army of England, banners flying, assembled around them. There were nine thousand archers and three thousand men-at-arms, all of them mounted, and there were pages and squires and women and servants and priests and yet more spare horses, and the flags snapped bright in the midday wind as the king, mounted on a snow-white gelding, rode along his red-crossed army. The sun glinted from the crown that surmounted his helmet. He reached the skyline above the town and he stared for a few minutes, then nodded to Sir John Holland who would have the honor of leading the vanguard. “With God’s blessing, Sir John!” the king called, “on to Harfleur!”
Agincourt Page 15
