Bernard Cornwell: Agincourt

“He was going to rape the girl, Sir Edward,” Hook said, “he did rape her!”

“Well of course he raped her,” Sir Edward said impatiently, “it’s what the reverend Sir Martin does.”

“And God spoke to me,” Hook blurted out.

“He what?” Sir Edward stared at Hook as if the archer had just claimed that the sky had turned to buttermilk.

“God spoke to me,” Hook said miserably. He did not sound at all convincing.

Sir Edward said nothing. He stared at Hook a brief while longer, then turned to gaze at the marketplace where the burning man had stopped screaming. Instead he hung from the stake and his hair flared sudden and bright. The ropes that held him burned through and the body collapsed in a gout of flame. Two men-at-arms used pitchforks to thrust the sizzling corpse back into the heart of the fire.

“I heard a voice,” Hook said stubbornly.

Sir Edward nodded dismissively, as though acknowledging he had heard Hook’s words, but wanted to hear no more. “Where’s your bow?” he asked suddenly, still looking at the burning figure in the smoke.

“In the tavern taproom, Sir Edward, with the others.”

Sir Edward turned to the inn yard’s gate where Tom Perrill, grinning and with one hand stained with blood, had just appeared. “I’m sending you to the taproom,” Sir Edward said quietly, “and you’ll wait there. You’ll wait there so we can tie your wrists and take you home and arraign you in the manor court and then hang you from the oak outside the smithy.”

“Yes, Sir Edward,” Hook said in sullen obedience.

“What you will not do,” Sir Edward said, still in a soft voice, but more forcefully, “is walk out of the tavern’s front door. You will not walk into the heart of the city, Hook, and you will not find a street called Cheapside or look for an inn called the Two Cranes. And you will not go into the Two Cranes and enquire after a man called Henry of Calais. Are you listening to me, Hook?”

“Yes, Sir Edward.”

“Henry of Calais is recruiting archers,” Sir Edward said. A man in royal livery was carrying a burning log toward the second pyre where the other Lollard leader was tied to the tall stake. “They need archers in Picardy,” Sir Edward said, “and they pay good money.”

“Picardy,” Hook repeated the name dully. He thought it must be a town somewhere else in England.

“Earn yourself some money in Picardy, Hook,” Sir Edward said, “because God knows you’ll need it.”

Hook hesitated. “I’m an outlaw?” he asked nervously.

“You’re a dead man, Hook,” Sir Edward said, “and dead men are outside the law. You’re a dead man because my orders are that you’re to wait in the tavern and then be taken back to the judgment of the manor court, and Lord Slayton will have no choice but to hang you. So go and do what I just said.”

But before Hook could obey there was a shout from the next corner. “Hats off!” men called abruptly, “hats off!” The shout and a clatter of hooves announced the arrival of a score of horsemen who swept into the wide square where their horses fanned out, pranced, and then stood with breath smoking from their nostrils, and hooves pawing the mud. Men and women were clawing off their hats and kneeling in the mud.

“Down, boy,” Sir Edward said to Hook.

The leading horseman was young, not much older than Hook, but his long-nosed face showed a serene certainty as he swept his cold gaze across the marketplace. His face was narrow, his eyes were dark, and his mouth thin-lipped and grim. He was clean-shaven, and the razor seemed to have abraded his skin so that it looked raw-scraped. He rode a black horse that was richly bridled with polished leather and glittering silver. He had black boots, black breeches, a black tunic, and a fleece-lined cloak of dark purple cloth. His hat was black velvet and sported a black feather, while at his side hung a black-scabbarded sword. He looked all around the marketplace, then urged the horse forward to watch the one woman and three men who now jerked and twisted from the bell ropes hanging from the Bull’s beam. A vagary of wind gusted spark-laden smoke at his stallion, which whinnied and shied away. The rider soothed it by patting its neck with a black-gloved hand, and Hook saw that the man wore jeweled rings over his gloves. “They were given a chance to repent?” the horseman demanded.

“Many chances, sire,” Sir Martin answered unctuously. The priest had hurried out of the tavern yard and was down on one knee. He made the sign of the cross and his haggard face looked almost saintly, as though he suffered for his Lord God. He could appear that way, his devil-dog-bitten eyes suddenly full of pain and tenderness and compassion.

“Then their deaths,” the young man said harshly, “are pleasing to God and they are pleasing to me. England will be rid of heresy!” His eyes, brown and intelligent, rested briefly on Nick Hook, who immediately dropped his gaze and stared at the mud until the black-dressed horseman spurred away toward the second fire, which had just been lit. But, in the moment before Hook had looked away, he had seen the scar on the young man’s face. It was a battle scar, showing where an arrow had slashed into the corner between nose and eye. It should have killed, yet God had decreed that the man should live.

“You know who that is, Hook?” Sir Edward asked quietly.

Hook did not know for sure, but nor was it hard to guess that he was seeing, for the first time in his life, the Earl of Chester, the Duke of Aquitaine and the Lord of Ireland. He was seeing Henry, by the grace of God, the King of England.

And, according to all who claimed to understand the tangled webs of royal ancestry, the King of France too.

The flames reached the second man and he screamed. Henry, the fifth King of England to carry that name, calmly watched the Lollard’s soul go to hell.

“Go, Hook,” Sir Edward said quietly.

“Why, Sir Edward?” Hook asked.

“Because Lord Slayton doesn’t want you dead,” Sir Edward said, “and perhaps God did speak to you, and because we all need His grace. Especially today. So just go.”

And Nicholas Hook, archer and outlaw, went.

The River Aisne swirled slow through a wide valley edged with low wooded hills. It was spring and the new leaves were a startling green. Long weeds swayed in the river where it looped around the city of Soissons.

The city had walls, a cathedral, and a castle. It was a fortress that guarded the Flanders road, which led north from Paris, and now it was held by the enemies of France. The garrison wore the jagged red cross of Burgundy and above the castle flew the gaudy flag of Burgundy’s duke, a flag that quartered the royal arms of France with blue and yellow stripes, all of it badged with a rampant lion.

The rampant lion was at war with the lilies of France, and Nicholas Hook understood none of it. “You don’t need to understand it,” Henry of Calais had told him in London, “on account of it not being your goddam business. It’s the goddam French falling out amongst themselves, that’s all you need to know, and one side is paying us money to fight, and I hire archers and I send them to kill whoever they’re told to kill. Can you shoot?”

“I can shoot.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

Nicholas Hook could shoot, and so he was in Soissons, beneath the flag with its stripes, lion, and lilies. He had no idea where Burgundy was, he knew only that it had a duke called John the Fearless, and that the duke was first cousin to the King of France.

“And he’s mad, the French king is,” Henry of Calais had told Hook in England. “He’s mad as a spavined polecat, the stupid bastard thinks he’s made of glass. He’s frightened that someone will give him a smart tap and he’ll break into a thousand pieces. The truth is he’s got turnips for brains, he does, and he’s fighting against the duke who isn’t mad. He’s got brains for brains.”