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 pr
obably 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.