Agincourt

NINE

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

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

“Pride?”

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

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

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

“Nothing,” the priest said bluntly.

“So why do it?”

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

“And we travel without the big wagons?”

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

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

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

“Before?”

“You don’t know your history, Hook?”

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

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

“And died?”

“Oh, good God, no, he beat the French! You’ve surely heard of Crécy?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hook frowned, puzzled. “Melisande?”

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

“And if they do?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He has been,” Melisande said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The French won’t stop us?”

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

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

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

“I just got here,” Michael said ruefully.

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

“Or a lake,” Michael suggested.

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

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

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

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

“Sir John?”

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

“What’s that, Sir John?”

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

“Three days’ ride?” Hook asked.

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

“I think so, Sir John.”

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

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

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

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

“Yes, Sir John.”

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

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

“There’s a what?” Sir John snapped.

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

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

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

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

“Do it, man.”

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

“It would help!” Hook answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Much too far,” Michael agreed.

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

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

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

“Sweet Jesu!” Michael said in pure admiration.

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

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

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

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

“Nearly, Sir John.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Find another ford, of course.”

“Where, pray?”

“Inland,” Sir John said grimly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Stakes?” Thomas Evelgold inquired cautiously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“God knows,” Father Christopher said.

“And He’s not telling you, father?”

“Does your saint tell you anything?”

“Not a word.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lanferelle!”

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

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

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

“Maybe they are,” Hook suggested.

“And they will kill each other in battle?”

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

“I did,” Hook said.

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

“Oui,” she said.

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

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

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

“For what?”

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

“I stay with Nicholas,” she said.

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

“The goddams?” Hook asked.

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

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

“Will it catch us?” Melisande asked.

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

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

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

“Well, Hook?” Sir John demanded.

“None of us has it, Sir John.”

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

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

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

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

And then the pyx was found.

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

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

“No!” Hook protested.

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

For whom the rope waited.

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

“No!” Hook shouted.

“Shut your mouth,” Thomas Evelgold growled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I didn’t steal it!” Michael pleaded.

“Whose company is he?” the king demanded.

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

“The pyx was in his keeping?”

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

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

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

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

“Who discovered it?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ll bury him,” Hook said.

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

“He didn’t do it!” Hook protested.

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

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

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

“The priest lied!”

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

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

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

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

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

It started to rain again.

TEN

There was not one ford across the Somme, but two, and, better still, neither was guarded. The shadowing French army on the river’s north bank had still not marched the full distance about the great looping curve and the English, arriving at the edge of a vast marsh that bordered the Somme, could see nothing but empty countryside beyond the river.

The first scouts to explore the fords reported that the river was flowing high because of the rain, but not so high as to make the fords impassable, yet to reach the crossings the army had to negotiate two causeways that ran arrow-straight across the wide marsh. Those causeways were over a mile long; twin roads that had been raised above the mire by embankments, and the French had broken both so that at the center of each was a great gap where the causeways had been demolished to leave a morass of treacherous, sucking ground. The scouts had crossed those stretches of bog, but reported that their horses had sunk over their knees, and that none of the army’s wagons could hope to negotiate the terrain. “Then we remake the causeways,” the king ordered.

It took the best part of a day. Much of the army was ordered to dismantle a nearby village so that the beams, rafters, and joists could be used as foundations for the repairs. Bundled thatch, faggots, and earth were then thrown on top of the timbers to make new embankments while the men of the rearguard formed a battle line to protect the work against any surprise attack from the south. There was no such attack. French horsemen watched from a distance, but those enemy riders were few and made no attempt to interfere.

Hook took no part in the work because the vanguard had been ordered to cross the river before any repairs were made. They left their horses behind, walked to the causeway’s gap, and jumped down into the bog where they struggled across to the causeway’s next stretch, which led to the river bank. They waded the Somme, the archers holding bows and arrow bags above their heads. Hook shivered as he went further into the river. He could not swim and he felt tremors of fear as the water crept over his waist and up to his chest, but then, as he pushed against the slow pressure of the current, the riverbed began to rise again. The footing was firm enough, though a few men slipped and one man-at-arms was swept downstream, his cries fading fast as his mail coat dragged him under. Then Hook was wading through reeds and climbing a short muddy bluff to reach the northern bank. The first men were across the Somme.

Sir John ordered his archers to go a half-mile north to where a straggling hedge and ditch snaked between two wide pastures. “If the goddam French come,” Sir John said bleakly, “just kill them.”

“You expecting their army, Sir John?” Thomas Evelgold asked.

“The one that was tracking us along the river?” Sir John asked, “those bastards will get here soon enough. But their larger army? God only knows. Let’s hope they think we’re still south of the river.”

And even if it was only the smaller army that came, Hook thought, these few archers of the vanguard could not hope to stop it. He sat by a stretch of flooded ditch, beneath a dead alder, staring north, his mind wandering. He had been a bad brother, he decided. He had never looked after Michael properly and, if he was truthful with himself, he would admit that his brother’s trusting character and unending optimism had grated on him. He gave a nod when Thomas Scarlet, who had lost his own twin brother to Lanferelle’s sword, squatted beside him. “I’m sorry about Michael,” Scarlet said awkwardly, “he was a good lad.”

“He was,” Hook said.

“Matt was too.”

“Aye, he was. A good archer.”

“He was,” Scarlet said, “he was.”

They looked north in silence. Sir John had said that the first evidence of a French force would be mounted scouts, but no horsemen were visible.

“Michael always snatched at the string,” Hook said. “I tried to teach him, but he couldn’t stop it. He always snatched. Spoiled his aim, it did.”

“It does,” Scarlet said.

“He never learned,” Hook said, “and he didn’t steal that goddamned box either.”

“He didn’t seem like a thief.”

“He wasn’t! But I know who did steal it, and I’ll cut his goddam throat.”

“Don’t hang for it, Nick.”

Hook grimaced. “If the French catch us, it won’t matter, will it? I’ll either be hanged or chopped down.” Hook had a sudden vision of the archers dying in their tortured agony in front of the little church in Soissons. He shivered.

“But we’ve crossed the river,” Scarlet said firmly, “and that’s good. How far now?”

“Father Christopher says it’s a week’s marching from here, maybe a day or two longer.”

“That’s what they said a couple of weeks ago,” Scarlet said ruefully, “but doesn’t matter. We can go hungry for a week.”

Geoffrey Horrocks, the youngest archer, brought a helmet filled with hazelnuts. “Found them up the hedge,” he said, “you want to share them out, sergeant?” he asked Hook.

“You do it, lad. Tell them it’s supper.”

“And tomorrow’s breakfast,” Scarlet said.

“If I had a net we could catch some sparrows,” Hook said.

“Sparrow pie,” Scarlet said wistfully.

They fell silent. The rain had stopped, though the keen wind was chilling the wet archers to the bone. A flock of black starlings, so thick that they looked like a writhing cloud, rose and fell two fields away. Behind Hook, far across the river, men labored to remake the causeways.

“He was a grown man, you know.”

“What did you say, Tom?” Hook asked, startled from half-waking thoughts.

“Nothing,” Scarlet said, “I was falling asleep till you woke me.”

“He was a very good man,” the voice said quietly, “and he’s resting in heaven now.”

Saint Crispinian, Hook thought, and his view of the country was misted by tears. You’re still with me, he wanted to say.

“In heaven there are no tears,” the saint went on, “and no sickness. There’s no dying and no masters. There’s no hunger. Michael is in joy.”

“You all right, Nick?” Tom Scarlet asked.

“I’m all right,” Hook said, and thought that Crispinian knew all about brothers. He had suffered and died with his own brother, Crispin, and they were both with Michael now, and somehow that seemed good.

It took the best part of the day to restore the two causeways and then the army began to cross in two long lines of horses and wagons and archers and servants and women. The king, resplendent in armor and crown, galloped past Hook’s ditch. He was followed by a score of nobles who curbed their horses and, like Hook, gazed northward. But the French army that had been keeping pace along the river’s northern bank had fallen far behind and there was no enemy in sight. The English were across the river and now had entered territory claimed by the Duke of Burgundy, though it was still France. But between the army and England there were now no major obstacles unless the French army intervened.

“We march on,” Henry told his commanders.

They would march north again, north and west. They would march toward Calais, toward England and to safety. They marched.

They left the wide River Somme behind, but next day, because the army was footsore, sick, and hungry, the king ordered a halt. The rain had cleared and the sun shone through wispy clouds. The army was now in well-wooded country so there was fuel for fires and the encampment took on a holiday air as men hung their clothes to dry on makeshift hurdles. Sentries were set, but it seemed as though England’s army was all alone in the vastness of France. Not one Frenchman appeared. Men scavenged the woods for nuts, mushrooms, and berries. Hook hoped to find a deer or a boar, but the animals, like the enemy, were nowhere to be seen.

“We might just have escaped,” Father Christopher greeted Hook on his return from his abortive hunt.

“The king must think so,” Hook said.

“Why?”

“Giving us a day’s halt?”

“Our gracious king,” the priest said, “is so mad that he might just be hoping the French will catch us.”

“Mad? Like the French king?”

“The French king is really mad,” Father Christopher said, “no, our king is just convinced of God’s favor.”

“Is that madness?”

Father Christopher paused as Melisande came to join them. She leaned on Hook, saying nothing. She was thinner than Hook had ever seen her, but the whole army was thin now; thin, hungry, and ill. Somehow Hook and his wife had both avoided the bowel-emptying sickness, though many others had caught the disease and the camp stank of it. Hook put his arm about her, holding her close and thinking suddenly that she had become the most precious thing in all his world. “I hope to God we have escaped,” Hook said.

“And our king half hopes that,” Father Christopher said, “and half hopes that he can prove God’s favor.”

“And that’s his madness?”

“Beware of certainty. There are men in the French army, Hook, who are as convinced as Henry that God is on their side. They’re good men too. They pray, they give alms, they confess their sins, and they vow never to sin again. They are very good men. Can they be wrong in their conviction?”

“You tell me, father,” Hook said.

Father Christopher sighed. “If I understood God, Hook, I would understand everything because God is everything. He is the stars and the sand, the wind and the calm, the sparrow and the sparrowhawk. He knows everything, He knows my fate and He knows your fate, and if I understood all that, what would I be?”

“You would be God,” Melisande said.

“And that I cannot be,” Father Christopher said, “because we cannot comprehend everything. Only God does that, so beware of a man who says he knows God’s will. He is like a horse that believes it controls its rider.”

“And our king believes that?”

“He believes he is God’s favorite,” Father Christopher said, “and perhaps he is. He is a king, after all, anointed and blessed.”

“God made him a king,” Melisande said.

“His father’s sword made him a king,” Father Christopher said tartly, “but, of course, God could have guided that sword.” He made the sign of the cross. “Yet there are those,” he spoke softly now, “who say his father had no right to the throne. And the sins of the fathers are visited on their sons.”

“You’re saying…” Hook began, then checked his tongue because the conversation was veering dangerously close to treason.

“I’m saying,” Father Christopher said firmly, “that I pray we get home to England before the French find us.”

“They’ve lost us, father,” Hook said, hoping he was right.

Father Christopher smiled gently. “They may not know where we are, Hook, but they know where we’re going. So they don’t need to find us, do they? All they need do is get ahead of us and let us find them.”

“And we’re resting for the day,” Hook said grimly.

“So we are,” the priest said, “which means we must pray that our enemy is at least two days’ march behind us.”

Next day they rode on. Hook was one of the scouts who ranged two miles ahead of the vanguard and looked for the enemy. He liked being a scout. It meant he could put his sharpened stake on a wagon and ride free in front of the army. The clouds were thickening again and the wind was cold. There had been a frost whitening the grass when the camp stirred, though it had vanished quickly enough. The beech leaves had turned to a dull red-gold and the oaks to the color of bronze, while some trees had already shed their foliage. The lower pastures were half flooded from the recent rain, while the fields that had been deep-plowed for winter wheat showed long streaks of silvery water between the ridges left by the plowshare. Hook’s men were following a drover’s path that led past villages, but the hovels were all empty. There was no livestock and no grain. Someone, he thought, knew the English were on this road and had stripped the countryside bare, but whoever had organized that deprivation had vanished. There was no sign of an enemy.

It began to rain again at midday. It was just a drizzle, but it penetrated every gap in Hook’s clothing. Raker, his horse, went slowly. The whole army was going slowly, incapable of speed. They passed a town and Hook, so dulled now to what he saw, scarce looked at the walls with their brightly defiant banners. He just rode on, following the road, leaving the town and its battlements behind until, quite suddenly, Hook knew they were doomed.

He and his men had breasted a small rise and in front of them was a wide grassy valley, its far side rising gently to the horizon where there was a church tower and a spread of woods. The valley was pastureland, empty of life now, but scarred across the valley floor was the evidence of their approaching doom.

Hook curbed Raker and stared.

Because right across his front, stretching from east to west, was a smear of mud, a great wide scar of churned land where every blade of grass had vanished. Water glinted from the myriad holes left by the hooves of horses. The ground was a mess, churned and rutted and broken and pitted, because an army had marched through the valley.

It must have been a great army, Hook thought. Thousands of horses had left the tracks that were newly made. He rode to the edge of the scar and saw the clarity of the hoofprints so distinctly that in places he could see the marks left by the horseshoe nails. He stared westward, to where that vanished army had gone, but he saw nothing, only the path by which the thousands of men had traveled. The scarred earth turned north at the valley’s end.

“Sweet Jesus,” Tom Scarlet said in awe, “there must be thousands of the bastards.”

“Ride back,” Hook told Peter Scoyle, “find Sir John, tell him about this.”

“Tell him about what?” Scoyle asked.

Hook remembered Scoyle was a Londoner. “What do you think that is?” He pointed at the scarred earth.

“A muddy mess,” Scoyle said.

“Tell Sir John the enemy was here within the last day.”

“They were?”

“Go!” Hook said impatiently, then turned back to stare at the myriad hoofprints. There were thousands upon thousands, so many they had trampled the valley into a quagmire. He had seen the drovers’ roads in England after the vast herds of cattle had been driven down to their slaughter in London, and as a boy he had been amazed by the size of the herds, but these tracks were far greater than any left by those doomed animals. Every man in France, he thought, and maybe every man in Burgundy, had ridden across this valley, and they had passed within the last day. So somewhere to the west or north, somewhere between this place and Calais, that great host waited.

“They have to be watching us,” he said.

“Sweet Jesus,” Tom Scarlet said again, and made the sign of the cross. Both archers looked at the farther woods, but no glint of reflected sunlight betrayed a man in armor. Yet Hook was sure the enemy must have scouts who were shadowing England’s tired army.

Sir John arrived with a dozen men-at-arms. He said nothing as he stared at the tracks and then, as Hook had done, he looked westward and then northward. “So they’re here,” he finally said, sounding resigned.

“That’s not the small army that was following us along the river,” Hook said.

“Of course it goddam well isn’t,” Sir John said, looking at the rutted fields. “That’s the might of France, Hook,” he said sarcastically.

“And they must be watching us, Sir John,” Hook said.

“You need a shave, Hook,” Sir John said harshly. “You look like a goddamned vagabond.”

“Yes, Sir John.”

“And of course the cabbage-shitting farts are watching us. So fly the banners! And damn them! Damn them, damn them, damn them!” He shouted the mild curses, startling Lucifer who flicked back his ears. “Damn them and keep going!” Sir John said.

Because there was no choice. And next day, though there was still no sign of the enemy army, there came proof that the French knew exactly where the English were because three heralds waited on the road. They were in their bright liveries, carrying the long white wands of their office, and Hook greeted them politely and sent for Sir John again, and Sir John took the three heralds to the king.

“What did those fancy bastards want?” Will of the Dale asked.

“They wanted to invite us all to breakfast,” Hook said. “Bacon, bread, fried goose liver, pease pudding, good ale.”

Will grinned. “I’d strangle my own mother for a bowl of beans now, just plain beans.”

“Beans, bread, and bacon,” Hook said wistfully.

“Roast ox,” Will said, “with juices dripping.”

“Just a lump of bread would do,” Hook said. He knew the three Frenchmen would learn much from their visit. Heralds were supposed to be above faction, mere observers and messengers, but the three men would surely tell the French commanders of the English troops scurrying off the road to lower their breeches and void their bowels, of the sagging horses, of the bedraggled, silent army that traveled north and west so slowly.

“They challenged us to battle,” Father Christopher said after the heralds had left. The chaplain, inevitably, knew what had happened when the three French emissaries met the king. “It was all exceedingly polite,” he told Hook and his archers, “everyone bowed very prettily, exchanged charming compliments, agreed the weather was most inclement, and then our guests issued their challenge.”

“Nice of them,” Hook said sarcastically.

“The niceties are important,” the priest said chidingly, “you don’t dance with a woman without asking her first, not in polite society, so now the Constable of France and the Duke of Bourbon and the Duke of Orleans are inviting us to dance.”

“Who are they?” Tom Scarlet asked.

“The constable is Charles d’Albret, and pray he doesn’t dance face to face with you, Tom, and the dukes are great men. The Duke of Bourbon is an old friend of yours, Hook.”

“Of mine?”

“He led the army that ruined Soissons.”

“Jesus,” Hook said, and again thought of the blind archers bleeding to death on the cobblestones.

“And each of the dukes,” Father Christopher went on, “probably leads a contingent greater than our whole army.”

“And the king accepted their invitation?” Hook asked.

“Oh willingly!” Father Christopher said. “He loves to dance, though he declined to name a place for the dance. He said the French would doubtless have no trouble finding us.”

And now, because he knew the French would have no such trouble, and because his army might have to fight at any moment, the king ordered every man to ride in full panoply. They were to wear armor and surcoats, though most armor and jupons were now so stained or rusted and ragged that they would hardly impress an enemy, let alone overawe one. And still no enemy appeared.

No enemy showed on the feast day of Saint Cordula, the British virgin who had been slaughtered by pagans, nor the next day, the feast of Saint Felix who had been beheaded for refusing to yield the holy scriptures in his possession. The army had been marching for more than two weeks, and the next day was the feast of Saint Raphael who Father Christopher said was one of the seven archangels who stand before the throne of God. “And you know what tomorrow is?” Father Christopher asked Hook on Saint Raphael’s Day.

Hook had to think about his answer which, when it came, was uncertain. “Is it a Wednesday?”

“No,” Father Christopher said, smiling, “tomorrow is a Friday.”

“Then I know tomorrow’s Friday,” Hook said, grinning, “and you’ll make us all eat fish, father. Maybe a nice fat trout? Or an eel?”

“Tomorrow,” Father Christopher said gently, “is the feast day of Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian.”

“Oh, dear God,” Hook said, and felt as though cold water had suddenly washed his heart, though he could not tell whether that was fear or the sudden certitude that such a day presaged a real and beneficial significance.

“And it might be a good day to say your prayers,” the priest suggested.

“I will, father,” Hook promised, and he began praying that very moment. Let us reach your day, he prayed to Saint Crispinian, without seeing the French, and I will know we are safe. Let us escape, he prayed, and take us safe home. Blind the French to our presence, he begged, and he added that prayer to Saint Raphael who was the patron saint of the blind. Just take us safe home, he prayed, and he vowed to Saint Crispinian that he would make a pilgrimage to Soissons if the saint took him home and he would put money into a jar in the cathedral, enough money to pay for the altar frontal that John Wilkinson had torn apart so long ago. Just take us home, he prayed, take us all home and make us safe.

And that day, Saint Raphael’s Day, Thursday the twenty-fourth of October, 1415, Hook’s prayers were answered.

They were riding through a region of small, steep hills and fast-flowing streams, guided by a local man, a fuller, who knew the tangle of bewildering tracks that laced the countryside. He led Hook and the vanguard’s scouts along a wagon path that twisted beneath trees. The road to Calais was some distance to the west, but it could not be followed because it led to Hesdin, a walled town on the bank of a small river, and the bridge there was guarded by a barbican, and so the guide took them toward another crossing. “You go north after the river,” the man said, “just go north and you find the road again. You understand?” He was frightened of the archers and even more scared of the men-at-arms in royal livery who rode just behind and made the decisions about whether the fuller could be trusted.

“I understand,” Hook said.

“Just go north,” the man insisted. The path dropped into a valley where a village lay on the southern bank of a river. “La Rivière Ternoise,” the man said, then pointed to the far bank where the hills climbed steeply. “You go up there,” he said, “and find the road to Saint-Omer.”

“Saint-Omer?”

“Oui!” the guide said and Hook remembered his journey with Melisande when Saint-Omer had been their goal and Calais had lain not far beyond. So close, he thought. The nervous fuller said something else and Hook only half heard and asked him to say it again.’ The local people,” the man said, “call the Ternoise the River of Swords.”

That name sent a shiver through Hook. “Why?”

The man shrugged. “They are all mad,” he said, “it’s just a river.”

The river was shallow despite the recent rain and the knight commanding the men-at-arms ordered Hook to take his archers across the ford and up the farther slope. “Wait at the crest,” he said and Hook obediently kicked Raker down to the River of Swords. His archers followed him, splashing through water that barely reached their horses’ bellies. The slope beyond the river was steep and he and his men climbed it slowly on their tired horses. The rain had stopped, though every now and then a spatter of drizzle would sweep from a sky that grew ever darker. The clouds were low, almost black, and the air above the eastern horizon was the color of soot. “It’s going to fairly piss down,” Hook said to Will of the Dale.

“Looks like it,” Will answered apprehensively. The air was oppressive, thick, full of a strange menace.

Hook was scarcely halfway up the slope before a whole band of men-at-arms splashed through the river and spurred up the hill behind him. Hook turned in the saddle and saw the column closing up on the Ternoise’s far bank as though a sudden sense of urgency had overtaken the army. Sir John, his standard-bearer close behind, thumped past Hook, riding for the crest that was outlined against the slate-dark sky and a moment later the king himself galloped up the slope on a horse the color of night. “What’s happening?” Tom Scarlet asked.

“God knows,” Hook said. The king, his companions, and every other man-at-arms had curbed their horses at the hill’s crest from where they now gazed northward.

Then Hook himself reached the skyline and he too stared.

Ahead of him the ground fell away to a village that lay in a small green valley. A road climbed from the village, leading onto a wide reach of land that was bare earth beneath the glowering sky. That bare plateau had been plowed, and on either side of the newly cut furrows were thick woods. The battlements of a small castle just showed above the trees to the west. A banner flew from the castellated tower, but it was too far away to see what badge it showed.

Something about the lay of the land was familiar, then Hook remembered it. “I’ve been here before,” he said to no one in particular. “Me and Melisande, we were here.”

“You were?” Tom Scarlet answered, but he was not really paying attention.

“We met a horseman here,” Hook said, staring north in a daze, “and he told us the name of the place, but I can’t remember it.”

“Must have a name, I suppose,” Scarlet said absently.

More Englishmen reached the crest and stopped there to stare. No one spoke much and many made the sign of the cross.

Because in front of them, and as numerous as the sands on the shore or as the stars in the sky, was the enemy. The forces of France and Burgundy were at the plowland’s far end and they were a multitude. Their bright banners boasted of their numbers and their banners were uncountable.

The might of France blocked the road to Calais and the English were trapped.

Henry, Earl of Chester, Duke of Aquitaine, Lord of Ireland, and King of England, was given a new and savage energy by the sight of the enemy. “Form battle!” he shouted. “Form battle!” He galloped his horse across the face of his gathering army. “Obey your leaders! They know where you should be, form on their standards! By the grace of God we fight this day! Form battle!”

The sun was low behind the lowering clouds and the French army was still gathering under banners as thick as trees. “If every banner is a lord,” Thomas Evelgold said, “and if every lord leads ten men, how many men is that?”

“Goddam thousands,” Hook said.

“And ten’s a low number,” the centenar said, “very low. More like a hundred men for every banner, maybe two hundred!”

“Sweet Jesus,” Hook said and tried counting the enemy flags, but they were too many. All he knew was that the enemy was vast and England’s army was small. “God help us,” he could not resist saying, and once again he had the shivering recollection of the blood and screams in Soissons.

“Someone has to help us,” Evelgold said briskly, then turned to his archers. “We’re on the right. Dismount! Stakes and bows! Look lively now! I want boys for the horses! Come on, don’t dawdle! Move your goddam bones! We’ve got some dying to do!”

The horses were left in the pastures beside the village as the army climbed the shallow slope to the plateau. The enemy could not be seen from the small valley, but as Hook breasted the rise onto the plowland the French were visible again and he felt his fears crawl back. What he saw was a proper army. Not a sickly, disheveled band of fugitives, but a proud, massed army come to punish the men who had dared invade France.

The English vanguard was on the right now, and its archers were farthest to the right where they were joined by half the archers who had formed the army’s center. The other half joined the rearguard who now formed on the left. So the wings of the army were each a mass of archers who flanked the men-at-arms who made a line between them.

“Sweet Christ,” Tom Scarlet said, “I’ve seen more men at a horse fair.”

He was pointing to the English men-at-arms. There were fewer than a thousand of them and they made a pathetically small line at the center of the array. The archers were far more numerous. Over two thousand were now assembled on each flank. “Stakes!” A knight wearing a green surcoat galloped along the face of the archers, “plant your stakes, lads!”

Sir John, who had formed with the men-at-arms in the line’s center, walked to where the archers readied their stakes. “We wait to see if they attack,” he explained, “and if not we’ll fight them in the morning!”

“Why don’t we just run away in the dark?” a man asked.

“I didn’t hear that question!” Sir John shouted, then went on down the line, telling men to be ready for a French assault.

The archers were not in close array like the men-at-arms who waited shoulder to armored shoulder in a line four men deep. The bowmen, instead, needed room to pull their long bowstaves and, in response to shouted orders, had moved some paces ahead of the men-at-arms where they scattered, each man finding a space. Hook was at the very front with the rest of Sir John’s men. He reckoned around two hundred archers were in line with him, the rest were behind in a dozen loose ranks where they now hammered their stakes so that the points faced toward the French. Once the stakes were in place the exposed point needed re-sharpening after the hammering it had received. “Stand in front of your stake!” the green-surcoated man shouted. “Don’t let the enemy see it!”

“Bastards aren’t blind,” Will of the Dale grumbled, “they must have seen what we were doing.”

The French were watching. They were a half-mile away, still arriving, a mass of color on horseback beneath banners brighter than the sky, which was becoming ever darker as the clouds thickened. Most of the French were milling around the skyline where tents were being erected, but hundreds rode southward to gaze at England’s army.

“I bet the bastards are laughing at us,” Tom Scarlet said. “They’re probably pissing themselves with laughter.”

The nearest enemy horsemen were just a quarter-mile away, standing or walking their horses in the plowland, and just gazing at the small army that faced them. To left and right the woods looked black in the fading evening light. Some archers, their stakes hammered home, were going into those woods to empty their bowels in the thick undergrowth of hawthorn, holly, and hazel, but most archers just stared back at the enemy and Hook reckoned Tom Scarlet was right. The French had to be laughing. They already had at least four or five men for every Englishman, and their forces were still arriving at the northern end of the field. Hook dropped to one knee on the wet ground, made the sign of the cross, and prayed to Saint Crispinian. He was not the only archer who prayed. Dozens of men were on their knees, as were some men-at-arms. Priests were walking among the doomed army, offering blessings, while the French walked their horses across the plowland, and Hook, opening his eyes, imagined their laughter, their scorn at this pathetic army that had defied them, had tried to escape them and now was trapped by them. “Save us,” he prayed to Saint Crispinian, but the saint said nothing in reply and Hook thought his prayer must have been lost in the great dark emptiness beyond the ominous clouds.

It began to rain properly. It was a cold, heavy rain and, as the wind dropped, the drops fell with a malevolent intensity that made the archers hurriedly unstring their bows and coil the cords into their hats and helmets to keep them from being soaked. The English heralds had ridden ahead of the array to be met by their French colleagues, and Hook saw the men bow to each other from their saddles. After a while the English heralds rode back, their gray horses spattered with mud from hooves to belly.

“No fight tonight, boys!” Sir John brought that news to the archers. “We stay where we are! No fires up here! You’re to stay silent! The enemy will do us the honor of fighting tomorrow, so try and sleep! No fight tonight!” He rode on down the archers’ line, his voice fading in the seethe of the hard rain.

Hook was still on one knee. “I will fight on your day,” he told the saint, “on your feast day. Look after us. Keep Melisande safe. Keep us all safe. I beg you. In the name of the Father, I beg you. Take us safe home.”

There was no answer, just the intense hiss of rain and a distant grumble of thunder.

“On your knees, Hook?” It was Tom Perrill who sneered the words.

Hook stood and turned to face his enemy, but Tom Evelgold had already placed himself between the two archers. “You want words with Hook?” the centenar challenged Perrill.

“I hope you live through tomorrow, Hook,” Perrill said, ignoring Evelgold.

“I hope we all live through tomorrow,” Hook said. He felt a terrible hatred of Perrill, but had no energy to make a fight of it in this wet dusk.

“Because we’re not finished,” Perrill said.

“Nor are we,” Hook agreed.

“And you murdered my brother,” Perrill said, staring at Hook. “You say you didn’t, but you did, and your brother’s death makes nothing even. I promised my mother something and you know what that promise was.” Rain dripped from the rim of his helmet.

“You should forgive each other,” Evelgold said. “If we’re fighting tomorrow we should be friends. We have enemies enough.”

“I have a promise to keep,” Perrill said stubbornly.

“To your mother?” Hook asked. “Does a promise to a whore count?” He could not resist the jibe.

Perrill grimaced, but kept his temper. “She hates your family and she wants it dead. And you’re the last one.”

“The French will like as not make your mother happy,” Evelgold said.

“One of us will,” Perrill said, “me or them,” he nodded to the enemy army, though kept his eyes on Hook, “but I’ll not kill you while they fight us. That’s what I came to tell you. You’re frightened enough,” he sneered, “without watching your back.”

“You’ve said your words,” Evelgold said, “now go.”

“So a truce,” Perrill suggested, ignoring the centenar, “till this is over.”

“I’ll not kill you while they fight us,” Hook agreed.

“Nor tonight,” Perrill demanded.

“Nor tonight,” Hook said.

“So sleep well, Hook. It might be your last night on earth,” Perrill said, then walked away.

“Why does he hate you?” Evelgold asked.

“It goes back to my grandfather. We just hate each other. The Hooks and the Perrills, they just hate each other.”

“Well, you’ll both be dead by this time tomorrow,” Evelgold said heavily, “we all will be. So make your confession and take mass before the fight. And your men are sentries tonight. Walter’s men take first watch, you take second. You’re to go halfway up the field,” he nodded at the plowland, “and you’re not to make any noise. No one is. No shouting, no singing, no music.”

“Why not?”

“How the goddam hell would I know? If a gentleman makes a noise the king will take away his horse and harness, and if an archer squeals he’ll have his ears cut off. King’s orders. So you stand watch, and God help you if the French come.”

“They won’t, will they? Not at night?”

“Sir John doesn’t think so. But he still wants sentries.” Evelgold shrugged as if to suggest that sentries would do no good, then, with nothing more to say, he walked away.

More French came to see their enemy before the night hid them. Rain swept across the plow, the sound of it drowning any laughter from the enemy. Tomorrow was Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian’s Day, and Hook reckoned it would be his last.

It rained through the night. A hard cold rain. Sir John Cornewaille ran through that rain to the cottage in Maisoncelles where the king had his quarters, but though the king’s youngest brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and Thomas, Duke of York, were in the tiny smoke-filled room, neither knew where the king of England had gone.

“Probably praying, Sir John,” the Duke of York said.

“God’s ears are getting a battering tonight, your grace,” Sir John said dourly.

“Add your voice to the cacophony,” the duke said. He was the grandson of the third Edward and had been cousin to the second Richard whose throne had been usurped by the king’s father, but he had proved his loyalty to the usurper’s son and, because his piety matched the king’s, he was deep in Henry’s confidence. “I believe his majesty is testing the temper of the men,” the duke said.

“The men will do,” Sir John said. He was uncomfortable with the duke whose learning and sanctity lent him an aloof distant air. “They’re cold,” he went on, “they’re sour, they’re wet, they’re hungry, they’re sick, but they’ll fight like mad dogs tomorrow. I wouldn’t want to fight them.”

“You wouldn’t advise,” Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester began, then hesitated and decided to say no more. Sir John knew what question had gone unsaid. Would he advise the king to slip away in the night? No, he would not, but he did not voice that opinion. The king would not run, not now. The king believed God was his supporter, and in the morning God would be required to prove that with a miracle.

“I’ll leave your graces to arm,” Sir John said.

“You have a message for his majesty?” the Duke of York asked.

“Only to wish him God’s blessings,” Sir John said. In truth he had gone to test the king’s temper, though he did not really doubt Henry’s resolve. He said his farewells and went back to the cowshed that was his own quarters. It was a miserable stinking hovel, but Sir John knew he was fortunate to have found it on a night when most men would be exposed to thunder, lightning, rain, and wintry cold.

Rain beat on the fragile roof, leaked through the thatch and puddled on the floor where a paltry fire gave off more smoke than light. Richard Cartwright, Sir John’s armorer, was waiting. He looked more priestlike than any priest, with a grave, dignified face and a quaint, fluttering courtesy. “Now, Sir John?” he asked.

“Now,” Sir John said, and dropped his wet cloak beside the fire.

He had taken off the armor he had worn during the day and Cartwright had dried it, scoured it for rust, and polished it. Now he used cloths he had kept dry in a horsehide bag to wipe dry the leather breeches and jerkin that Sir John wore. The leather was supple deerhide, and the two expensive garments had been made by a tailor in London so that they fitted Sir John like a second skin. Cartwright said nothing as he wiped handfuls of lanolin onto the deerhide.

Sir John was lost in his own thoughts. He had done this so often, stood with his hands outstretched as Cartwright made the leather arms and legs slippery so that the armor above would move easily. He thought back to tournaments and battles, to the excitement that always accompanied the anticipation of those contests, but he sensed no excitement tonight. The rain hammered, the cold wind gusted drops through the cowshed door, and Sir John thought of the thousands of Frenchmen whose armorers were also readying them for battle. So many thousands, he thought. Too many.

“You spoke, Sir John?” Cartwright said.

“Did I?”

“I’m sure I misheard, Sir John. Raise your arms, please.” Cartwright dropped a mail haubergeon over Sir John’s head. The chain mail was close-linked, sleeveless and dropped to Sir John’s groin. The armholes were wide, so that Sir John would not be hampered by its constriction. “Forgive me, Sir John,” Cartwright murmured as he always did when he knelt in front of his master and laced the front and back hems of the haubergeon between Sir John’s legs. Sir John said nothing.

Cartwright also kept silent as he buckled the cuisses to Sir John’s thighs. The front ones slightly overlapped the back ones, and Sir John flexed his legs to make sure the steel plates moved smoothly against each other. He did not ask for any adjustment because Cartwright knew precisely what he was doing. Next came the greaves to protect Sir John’s calves, and the roundels for his knees, and the plate-covered boots that were buckled to the greaves.

Cartwright stood and strapped the skirt into place. The skirt was leather, covered with mail and then plated with overlapping strips of steel to protect Sir John’s groin. Sir John was thinking of his archers trying to sleep in the driving rain. They would be tired, wet and cold in the morning, but he did not doubt they would fight. He heard stones scraping on blades. Arrows, swords, and axes were being sharpened.

The breastplate and backplate came next, the heaviest pieces, made of Bordeaux steel like the rest of the plate, and Cartwright deftly secured the buckles, then strapped on the rerebraces that covered Sir John’s upper arms, the vambraces for his forearms, more roundels for the elbows, and then, with a bow, offered Sir John the plate-covered gauntlets that had their leather palms cut out so Sir John could feel his weapons’ hilts with bare hands. Espaliers covered the vulnerable place where breastplate and backplate joined, then Cartwright strapped the hinged bevor about Sir John’s neck. Some men wore a chain aventail to cover the space between helmet and breastplate, but the finely shaped steel bevor was better than any mail, though Sir John frowned irritably when he tried to turn his head.

“Should I loosen the straps, Sir John?”

“No, no,” Sir John said.

“Your arms, Sir John?” Cartwright hinted gently, and then pulled the surcoat over his master’s head, helped Sir John’s arms into the wide sleeves, then smoothed the linen that was embroidered with the crowned lion and blazoned with the cross of Saint George. Cartwright buckled the sword belt into place and hung the big sword, Darling, which was Sir John’s favorite, from its studs. “You will entrust the scabbard with me, Sir John, in the morning?” Cartwright asked.

“Of course.” Sir John always discarded his scabbard before a fight because a scabbard could tangle a man’s legs. When battle was close Darling would rest in a leather loop, her blade bare.

A leather hood was laced over Sir John’s head, and it was done. The hood would help cushion the helmet which Sir John took, then handed back to Cartwright. “Take the visor off,” he ordered.

“But…”

“Take it off!”

Once, in a tournament in Lyons, Sir John had managed to knock closed the visor of an opposing swordsman and the man’s subsequent half-blindness had made him easy to defeat. Tomorrow, he thought, an Englishman would need every small advantage he could find.

“I believe the enemy have crossbows,” Cartwright said humbly.

“Take it off.”

The visor was removed and Cartwright, with a small bow, handed the helmet back to Sir John. Sir John would put it on later and Cartwright would buckle the helm to the espaliers, but for now Sir John was ready.

It rained. Out in the dark a horse whinnied and thunder sounded. Sir John picked up the strip of purple and white silk that was his wife’s favor and kissed it before stuffing the silk into the narrow space between bevor and breastplate. Some men tied their women’s favors about their necks and Sir John, off balance, had once grabbed such a favor and so pulled an enemy off his horse and then killed him. If, tomorrow, an enemy seized the purple and white it would come free easily and not topple Sir John. Every small advantage. Sir John flexed his arms and found everything satisfactory, and so gave a grim smile. “Thank you, Cartwright,” he said.

Cartwright bowed his head and spoke the words he had always spoken, right from the very first time he had armored his master. “Sir John,” he said, “you are dressed to kill.”

As were thirty thousand Frenchmen.

“What you should do,” Hook told Melisande, “is go away. Go tonight. Take all our coins, whatever you can carry, and go.”

“Go where?” she demanded.

“Find your father,” Hook said. They were talking in the English encampment, which lay in the lower ground south of the long plowed field. The small cottages of the village had been taken by lords, and Hook could hear the sound of hammers on steel as the armorers made the last adjustments to expensive plate. The sound was sharp, drowned by the seethe of the unending rain. To the east of the village the army’s wagons were parked, their spoked wheels lit by the few fires that struggled to survive the downpour. The French army was out of sight from the low ground, but their presence was betrayed by the dull glow of their campfires reflecting from the underside of the dark clouds. Those clouds were suddenly thrown into clear view by a fork of lightning that zigzagged into the eastern woods. A moment later a clap of thunder filled the universe like the sound of some monstrous cannon.

“I chose to be with you,” Melisande said stubbornly.

“We’re going to die,” Hook said.

“No,” she protested, but without much conviction.

“You talked to Father Christopher,” Hook said remorselessly, “and he talked to the heralds. He reckons there are thirty thousand Frenchmen. We’ve got six thousand men.”

Melisande huddled closer to Hook, trying to find shelter under the cloak they shared. They had their backs to an oak tree, but it offered small protection against the rain. “Melisande was married to a king of Jerusalem,” she said. Hook said nothing, letting her say whatever it was she needed to say. “And the king died,” she went on, “and all the men said she must go to a convent and say prayers, but she didn’t! She made herself queen, and she was a great queen!”

“You’re my queen,” Hook said.

Melisande ignored the clumsy compliment. “And when I was in the convent? I had one friend. She was older, much older, Sister Beatrice, and she told me to go away. She told me I had to find my own life, and I didn’t think I could, but then you came. Now I shall do what Queen Melisande did. I shall do what I want.” She shivered. “I will stay with you.”

“I’m an archer,” Hook said bleakly, “just an archer.”

“No, you are a ventenar! Tomorrow, who knows, maybe a centenar? And one day you will have land. We will have land.”

“Tomorrow is Saint Crispinian’s Day,” Hook said, unable to imagine owning land.

“And he has not forgotten you! Tomorrow he will be with you,” Melisande said.

Hook hoped that was true. “Do one thing for me,” he said, “wear your father’s jupon.”

She hesitated, then he felt her nod. “I will,” she promised.

“Hook!” Thomas Evelgold’s voice barked from the darkness. “Time to take your boys forward!” Tom Evelgold paused, waiting for a response, and Melisande clutched Hook. “Hook!” Evelgold shouted again.

“I’m coming!”

“I’ll see you again,” Melisande said, “before…” her voice trailed away.

“You’ll see me again,” Hook said, and he kissed her fiercely before relinquishing the cloak to her. “I’m coming!” he shouted to Tom Evelgold again.

None of his archers had been sleeping because none could sleep in the drenching rain beneath the thunder. They grumbled as they followed Hook up the gentle slope to the great stretch of black plowland where, for a long while, they blundered around searching for the picquet they were to relieve. Hook finally discovered Walter Magot and his men a hundred paces ahead of where the sharpened stakes were still positioned. “Tell me you left me a big fire and a pot of broth,” Magot greeted him.

“Thick broth, Walter, barley, beef and parsnips. Couple of turnips in it as well.”

“You’ll hear the French,” Magot said. “They’re walking their horses. If they get too close you sing out and they go away.”

Hook peered northward. The fires in the French camp were bright despite the rain, their flames reflected in rain-driven flickers from the water standing in the furrows and the same distant firelight outlined men leading horses in the field. “They want the horses warm for the morning,” Hook said.

“Bastards want to charge us, don’t they?” Magot said. “Come morning, all those big men on big goddam horses.”

“So pray it stops raining,” Hook said.

“Christ, pray it does,” Magot said fervently. In rain like this the bowstrings would get wet and feeble, stealing power from the arrows. “Stay warm, Nick,” Magot said, then led his men away to the dubious comforts of the encampment.

Hook crouched under the lash of wind and rain. Lightning staggered across the sky to stab down in the valley beyond the vast French camp and in its sudden light he had a vision of tents and banners. So many tents, so many banners, so many men come to the killing place. A horse whinnied. Scores of horses were being walked in the plowland and Hook, when they came close, could hear their big hooves sucking in the wet soil. A couple of men came too close and both times he called out and the French servants veered away. The rain slackened from time to time, lifting its veil of noise so Hook could clearly hear the sound of laughter and singing from the enemy camp. The English camp was silent. Hook doubted many men on either side would be sleeping. It was not just the weather that would keep them awake, but the knowledge that in the morning they must fight. Armorers would be sharpening weapons and Hook felt a shiver in his heart as he thought of what the dawn must bring. “Be with us,” he prayed to Saint Crispinian, then he remembered the advice of the priest in Soissons Cathedral, that heaven paid closer attention to those prayers that asked for blessings on others, and so he prayed for Melisande and for Father Christopher, that they would live through the next day’s turmoil.

Lightning staggered across the clouds, stark and white, and the thunder cracked overhead and the rain settled into a new and venomous intensity, falling so thick that the lights of the French camp faded. “Who goes there?” Tom Scarlet suddenly shouted.

“Friend!” a man called back.

Another flicker of lightning revealed a man-at-arms approaching from the English encampment. He was wearing a mail coat and plate leggings and the sudden lightning lasted long enough for Hook to see the man had no surcoat and, instead of a helmet, wore a wide-brimmed leather hat. “Who are you?” Hook demanded.

“Swan,” the man said, “John Swan. Whose men are you?”

“Sir John Cornewaille’s,” Hook answered.

“If every man in the army was like Sir John,” Swan said, “then the French would be wise to run away!” He almost had to shout to make himself heard above the rain’s malevolence. None of the archers responded. “Are your bows strung?” Swan asked.

“In this weather, sir? No!” Hook answered.

“What if it rains like this in the morning?”

Hook shrugged. “We’ll shorten strings, sir, and shoot away, but the cords will stretch.”

“And eventually they’ll break,” Will of the Dale added.

“They unravel,” Tom Scarlet said in explanation.

“So what will happen in the morning?” Swan asked. He had crouched near the archers who were clearly uncomfortable in the presence of this stranger.

“You tell us, sir,” Hook said.

“I want to know what you think,” Swan said forcibly. There was an embarrassed silence because none of the archers wanted to share his fears. A gust of laughter and cheering sounded from the French camp. “In the morning,” Swan said, “many of the French will be drunk. We’ll be sober.”

“Aye, only because we’ve got no ale,” Tom Scarlet said.

“So what do you think will happen?” Swan insisted.

There was another silence. “Drunken goddam bastards will attack us,” Hook finally said.

“And then?”

“Then we kill the goddam drunken bastards,” Tom Scarlet said.

“And so win the battle?” Swan asked.

Again no one answered. Hook wondered why Swan had sought them out to have this forced conversation. Eventually, as none of his men spoke, Hook did. “That’s up to God, sir,” he said awkwardly.

“God is on our side,” Swan said very forcefully.

“We do hope that, sir,” Tom Scarlet said dubiously.

“Amen,” Will of the Dale put in.

“God is on our side,” Swan said even more forcefully, “because our king’s cause is just. If the gates of hell were opened in tomorrow’s dawn and Satan’s legions come to attack us, we shall still win. God is with us.”

And Hook remembered that far-off sunlit day in Southampton Water when the two swans had beaten past the waiting fleet and he remembered, too, that the swan was one of the badges of Henry, King of England.

“You believe that?” Swan asked, “that our king’s cause is just?”

None of the other archers answered, but Hook recognized the voice now. “I don’t know if the king’s cause is just,” he said harshly.

There was a silence for a few heartbeats and Hook sensed the man who called himself Swan stiffen with indignation. “Why should it not be?” Swan asked, his voice dangerously cold.

“Because on the day before we crossed the Somme,” Hook said, “the king hanged a man for theft.”

“The man stole from the church,” Swan said dismissively, “so of course he had to die.”

“But he never stole the box,” Hook said.

“He didn’t,” Tom Scarlet added.

“He never stole that box,” Hook said harshly, “yet the king hanged him. And hanging an innocent man is a sin. So why should God be on the side of a sinner? Tell me that, sir? Tell me why God would favor a king who murders an innocent man?”

There was another silence. The rain had eased a little and Hook could hear music coming from the French camp, then a burst of laughter. There had to be lamps inside the enemy’s tents because their canvas glowed yellow. The man called Swan shifted slightly, his plate leggings creaking. “If the man was innocent,” Swan said in a low voice, “then the king did wrong.”

“He was innocent,” Hook said stubbornly, “and I’d stake my life on that.” He paused, wondering if he dared go further, then decided to take the risk. “Hell, sir, I’d wager the king’s life on that!”

There was a hiss as the man called Swan took a sudden inward breath, but he said nothing.

“He was a good boy,” Will of the Dale said.

“And he never even got a trial!” Tom Scarlet said indignantly. “At home, sir, at least we get to say our piece at the manor court before they hang us!”

“Aye! We’re Englishmen,” Will of the Dale said, “and we have rights!”

“You know the man’s name?” Swan asked after a pause.

“Michael Hook,” Hook said.

“If he was innocent,” Swan said slowly, as if he were thinking about his response even as he spoke it, “then the king will have masses sung for his soul, he will endow a chantry for him, and he will pray himself every day for the soul of Michael Hook.”

Another sharp fork of lightning stabbed the earth and Hook saw the dark scar beside the king’s nose where a bodkin arrow had hit him at Shrewsbury. “He was innocent, sir,” Hook said, “and the priest who said otherwise lied. It was a family quarrel.”

“Then the masses will be sung, the chantry will be endowed, and Michael Hook will go to heaven with a king’s prayers,” the king promised, “and tomorrow, by God’s grace, we will fight those Frenchmen and teach them that God and Englishmen are not to be mocked. We will win. Here,” he thrust something at Hook, who took it and found it was a full leather bottle. “Wine,” the king said, “to warm you through the rest of the night.” He walked away, his armored feet squelching in the thick soil.

“He was a weird goddam fellow,” Geoffrey Horrocks said when the man called Swan was well out of earshot.

“I just hope he’s goddam right,” Tom Scarlet put in.

“Goddam rain,” Will of the Dale grumbled. “Sweet Jesus, I hate this goddam rain.”

“How can we win tomorrow?” Scarlet asked.

“You shoot well, Tom, and you hope God loves you,” Hook said, and he wished Saint Crispinian would break his silence, but the saint said nothing.

“If the goddamned French do get in among us tomorrow,” Tom Scarlet said, then faltered.

“What, Tom?” Hook asked.

“Nothing.”

“Say it!”

“I was going to say I’d kill you and you could kill me before they torture us, but that would be difficult, wouldn’t it? I mean you’d be dead and you’d find it really hard to kill me if you were dead.” Scarlet had sounded serious, but then began to laugh and suddenly they were all laughing helplessly, though none really knew why. Dead men laughing, but that, Hook thought, was better than weeping.

They shared the wine, which did nothing to warm them, and slowly, gray as mail, the dawn relieved the dark. Hook went into the eastern woods to empty his bowels and saw a small village just beyond the trees. French men-at-arms had quartered themselves in the hovels and now were mounting horses and riding toward the main encampment. Back on the plateau Hook watched the French forming their battles under their damp standards.

And the English did the same. Nine hundred men-at-arms and five thousand archers came to the field of Agincourt in the dawn, and across from them, across the furrows that had been deep plowed to receive the winter wheat, thirty thousand Frenchmen waited.

To do battle on Saint Crispin’s Day.