Bernard Cornwell: Agincourt

“Come on, Hook, don’t dream,” Snoball grumbled.

The growing crowd was still sullen. There were a few folk who seemed pleased, but most watched resentfully, ignoring the priests who preached at them and turning their backs on a group of brown-robed monks who chanted a song of praise for the day’s happy events.

“Hoist the old man up,” Snoball said to Hook. “We’ve got ten to kill, so let’s get the work done!”

One of the empty handcarts that had brought the firewood was parked beneath the beam and Hook was needed to lift a man onto the cart’s bed. The other six prisoners, four men and two women, waited. One of the women clung to her husband, while the second had her back turned and was on her knees, praying. All four prisoners on the cart were men, one of them old enough to be Hook’s grandfather. “I forgive you, son,” the old man said as Hook twisted the thick rope around his neck. “You’re an archer, aren’t you?” the Lollard asked and still Hook did not answer. “I was on the hill at Homildon,” Hook’s victim said, looking up at the gray clouds as Hook tightened the rope, “where I shot a bow for my king. I sent shaft after shaft, boy, deep into the Scots. I drew long and I loosed sharp, and God forgive me, but I was good that day.” He looked into Hook’s eyes. “I was an archer.”

Hook held few things dear beyond his brother and whatever affection he felt for whichever girl was in his arms, yet archers were special. Archers were Hook’s heroes. England, for Hook, was not protected by men in shining armor, mounted on trapper-decked horses, but by archers. By ordinary men who built and plowed and made, and who could draw the yew war bow and send an arrow two hundred paces to strike a mark the size of a man’s hand. So Hook looked into the old man’s eyes and he saw, not a heretic, but the pride and strength of an archer. He saw himself. He suddenly knew he would like this old man and that realization checked his hands.

“Nothing you can do about it, boy,” the man said gently. “I fought for the old king and his son wants me dead, so draw the rope tight, boy, draw it tight. And when I’m gone, boy, do something for me.”

Hook gave the curtest of nods. It could either have been an acknowledgment that he had heard the request, or perhaps it was an agreement to do whatever favor the man might request.

“You see the girl praying?” the old man asked. “She’s my granddaughter. Sarah, she’s called, Sarah. Take her away for me. She doesn’t deserve heaven yet, so take her away. You’re young, boy, you’re strong, you can take her away for me.”

How? Hook thought, and he savagely pulled the rope’s bitter end so that the loop constricted about the old man’s neck, and then he jumped off the cart and half slipped in the mud. Snoball and Robert Perrill, who had tied the other nooses, were already off the cart.

“Simple folk, they are,” Sir Martin was saying, “just simple folk, but they think they know better than Mother Church, and so a lesson must be taught so that other simple folk don’t follow them into error. Have no pity for them, because it’s God’s mercy we’re administering! God’s unbounded mercy!”

God’s unbounded mercy was administered by pulling the cart sharply out from under the four men’s feet. They dropped slightly, then jerked and twisted. Hook watched the old man, seeing the broad barrel chest of an archer. The man was choking as his legs drew up, as they trembled and straightened then drew up again, but even in his dying agony he looked with bulging eyes at Hook as though expecting the younger man to snatch his Sarah out of the marketplace. “Do we wait for them to die,” Will Snoball asked Sir Edward, “or pull on their ankles?” Sir Edward seemed not to hear the question. He was distracted again, his eyes unfocused, though he appeared to be staring fixedly at the nearest man tied to the stake. A priest was haranguing the broken-jawed Lollard while a man-at-arms, his face deep shadowed by a helmet, held a flaming torch ready. “I’ll let them swing then, sir,” Snoball said and still got no answer.

“Oh my,” Sir Martin appeared to wake up suddenly and his voice was reverent, the same tone he used in the parish church when he said the mass, “oh my, oh my, oh my. Oh my, just look at that little beauty.” The priest was gazing at Sarah, who had risen from her knees and was staring with a horrified expression at her grandfather’s struggles. “Oh my, God is good,” the priest said reverently.

Nicholas Hook had often wondered what angels looked like. There was a painting of angels on the wall of the village church, but it was a clumsy picture because the angels had blobs for faces and their robes and wings had become yellowed and streaked by the damp that seeped through the nave’s plaster, yet nevertheless Hook understood that angels were creatures of unearthly beauty. He thought their wings must be like a heron’s wings, only much larger, and made of feathers that would shine like the sun glowing through the morning mist. He suspected angels had golden hair and long, very clean robes of the whitest linen. He knew they were special creatures, holy beings, but in his dreams they were also beautiful girls that could haunt a boy’s thoughts. They were loveliness on gleaming wings, they were angels.

And this Lollard girl was as beautiful as Hook’s imagined angels. She had no wings, of course, and her smock was muddied and her face was distorted into a rictus by the horror she watched and by the knowledge that she too must hang, but she was still lovely. She was blue-eyed and fair-haired, had high cheekbones and skin untouched by the pox. She was a girl to haunt a boy’s dreams, or a priest’s thoughts for that matter. “See that gate, Michael Hook?” Sir Martin asked flatly. The priest had looked for the Perrill brothers to do his bidding, but they were out of earshot and so he chose the nearest archer. “Take her through the gate and keep her in the stable there.”

Nick Hook’s younger brother looked puzzled. “Take her?” he asked.

“Not take her! Not you, you cloth-brained shit-puddling idiot! Just take that girl to the tavern stables! I want to pray with her.”

“Oh! You want to pray!” Michael said, smiling.

“You want to pray with her, father?” Snoball asked with a snide chuckle.

“If she repents,” Sir Martin said piously, “she can live.” The priest was shivering and Hook did not think it was the cold. “Christ in His loving mercy allows that,” Sir Martin said, his eyes darting from the girl to Snoball, “so let us see if we can make her repent? Sir Edward?”

“Father?”

“I shall pray with the girl!” Sir Martin called, and Sir Edward did not answer. He was still gazing at the nearest unlit pyre where the Lollard leader was ignoring the priest’s words and looking up at the sky.

“Take her, young Hook,” Sir Martin ordered.

Nick Hook watched his brother take the girl’s elbow. Michael was almost as strong as Nick, yet he had a gentleness and a sincerity that reached past the girl’s terror. “Come on, lass,” he said softly, “the good father wants to pray with you. So let me take you. No one’s going to hurt you.”

Snoball sniggered as Michael led the unresisting girl through the yard gate and into the stable where the archers’ horses were tethered. The space was cold, dusty, and smelled of straw and dung. Nick Hook followed the pair. He told himself he followed so he could protect his brother, but in truth he had been prompted by the dying archer’s words, and when he reached the stable door he looked up to see a window in the far gable and suddenly, out of nowhere, a voice sounded in his head. “Take her away,” the voice said. It was a man’s voice, but not one that Nick Hook recognized. “Take her away,” the voice said again, “and heaven will be yours.”