“He’s a bastard!” Hook said. The back of his head was matted with blood. Melisande was cleaning his mail and Hook was scrubbing at the rust on his sword blade with a stone. Both sword and mail had been supplied by Sir John Cornewaille.
“He was goading you, boy, he meant nothing,” Goddington said to Hook. “He insults everyone, but if you’re his man, and you will be, he’ll fight for you too. And he’ll fight for your woman.”
Next day Hook watched as Sir John put archer after archer onto the ground. When his own turn came to face Sir John he managed to trade a dozen blows before being turned, tripped, and thrown down. Sir John backed away from him, scorn on his scarred face, and that scorn drove Hook to his feet and to a wild, savage charge and a searing cut with the sword that Sir John contemptuously flicked away before tripping Hook again. “Anger, Hook,” Sir John growled, “if you don’t control it, it’ll kill you, and a dead archer’s no good to me. Fight cold, man. Fight cold and hard. Fight clever!” To Hook’s surprise he reached out a hand and pulled Hook to his feet. “But you’re quick, Hook,” Sir John said, “you’re quick! And that’s good.”
Sir John looked to be close on forty years old, but he was still the most feared tournament fighter in Europe. He was a squat, thick-chested man, bowlegged from years spent on horseback. He had the brightest blue eyes Hook had ever seen, while his flat, broken-nosed face showed the scars of battles, whether fought against rebels, Frenchmen, tavern brawlers, or tournament opponents. Now, in anticipation of war with France, he was raising a company of archers and another of men-at-arms, though in Sir John’s eyes, there was no great difference between the two. “We are a company!” he shouted at the archers, “archers and men-at-arms together! We fight for each other! No one hurts one of us and goes unhurt!” He turned and poked a metal finger into Hook’s chest. “You’ll do, Hook. Give him his coat, Goddington.”
Peter Goddington brought Hook a surcoat of white linen that showed Sir John’s badge: a red rampant lion with a golden star on its shoulder and a golden crown on its snarling head.
“Welcome to the company,” Sir John said, “and to your new duties. What are your new duties, Hook?”
“To serve you, Sir John.”
“No! I’ve got servants who do that! Your job, Hook, is to rid the world of anyone I don’t like! What is it?”
“To rid the world of anyone you don’t like, Sir John.”
And that was liable to be a large part of the world. Sir John Cornewaille loved his king, he worshipped his older wife who was the king’s aunt, he adored the women on whom he fathered bastards, and he was devoted to his men, but the rest of the world were nearly all goddam scum who deserved to die. He tolerated his fellow Englishmen, but the Welsh were cabbage-farting dwarves, the Scots were scabby arse-suckers, and the French were shriveled turds. “You know what you do with shriveled turds, Hook?”
“You kill them, Sir John.”
“You get up close and kill them,” Sir John said. “You let them smell your breath as they die. You let them see you grinning as you disembowel them. You hurt them, Hook, and then you kill them. Isn’t that right, father?”
“You speak with the tongue of angels, Sir John,” Father Christopher said blandly. He was Sir John’s confessor and, like the company of archers gathered in the field, wore a mail coat, tall boots, and a close-fitting helmet. There was nothing about him to suggest he was a priest, but if there had been any such evidence then he would not have been in Sir John’s employment. Sir John wanted soldiers.
“You’re not archers,” Sir John growled at the bowmen in the winter field. “You shoot arrows till the putrid bastards are on top of you, and then you kill them like men-at-arms! You’re no good to me if you can only shoot! I want you so close you can smell their dying farts! Ever killed a man so close you could have kissed him, Hook?”
“Yes, Sir John.”
Sir John grinned. “Tell me about the last one? How did you do it?”
“With a knife, Sir John.”
“How! Not what with! How?”
“Ripped his belly, Sir John,” Hook said, “straight up.”
“Did you get your hand wet, Hook?”
“Drenched, Sir John.”
“Wet with a Frenchman’s blood, eh?”
“He was an English knight, Sir John.”
“God damn your bollocks, Hook, but I love you!” Sir John exclaimed. “That’s how you do it!” he shouted at the archers, “you rip their bellies open, shove blades in their eyes, slice their throats, cut off their bollocks, drive swords up their arses, tear out their gullets, gouge their livers, skewer their kidneys, I don’t care how you do it, so long as you kill them! Isn’t that right, Father Christopher?”
“Our Lord and Savior could not have expressed the sentiment more eloquently, Sir John.”
“And next year,” Sir John said, glowering at his archers, “we might be going to war! Our king, God bless him, is the rightful King of France, but the French deny him his throne, and if God is doing what He’s supposed to do then He’ll let us invade France! And if that happens, we will be ready!”
No one was certain if war was coming or not. The French sent ambassadors to King Henry who sent emissaries back to France, and rumors swept England like the winter rains that seethed on the west wind. Sir John, though, was confident there would be war and he made a contract with the king as scores of other men were doing. The contract obliged Sir John to bring thirty men-at-arms and ninety archers to serve the king for twelve months, and in turn the king promised to pay wages to Sir John and his soldiers. The contract had been written in London and Hook was among the ten men who rode to Westminster when Sir John added his signature and pressed his lion seal into a blob of wax. The clerk waited for the wax to harden, then carefully cut the parchment into two unequal parts, not neatly, but zigzagging his blade randomly down the document’s length. He put one ragged part into a white linen bag, and gave the other to Sir John. Now, if anyone doubted the document’s provenance, the two uneven parts could be matched and neither party to the contract could forge the document and expect the forgery to go undiscovered. “The exchequer will advance you monies, Sir John,” the clerk said.
The king was raising money by taxes, by loans, and by pawning his jewels. Sir John received a bag of coins and a second bag that contained loose jewels, a golden brooch, and a heavy silver box. It was not enough to allow Sir John to raise the extra men and to buy the weapons and horses he needed, and so he borrowed more money from an Italian banker in London.
Men, horses, armor, and weapons had to be purchased. Sir John, his pages, squires, and servants needed over fifty horses between them. Each man-at-arms was expected to own at least three horses, including a properly trained destrier for fighting, while Sir John undertook to supply every archer with a riding horse. Hay was needed to feed all the horses and had to be purchased until the spring rains greened the pastures. The men-at-arms provided their own armor and weapons, though Sir John did order a hundred short lances for use by men fighting on foot. He had also equipped his ninety archers with mail coats, helmets, good boots, and a weapon to use in the close-quarter fighting when their bows were no longer useful. “Swords won’t help you much in battle,” he told his archers. “Your enemies will be in plate armor and you can’t cut plate armor with a sword. Use a poleax! Beat the bastards down! Then kneel on the arse-sucking scabs, lift their visors, and put a knife into one of their filthy eyes.”
“Unless they are wealthy,” Father Christopher put in mildly. The priest was the oldest man in Sir John’s company, over forty years old, with a round, cheerful face, a twisted smile, gray hair, and eyes that were both curious and mischievous.
“Unless the arse-licking scab is wealthy,” Sir John agreed, “in which case you take him prisoner and so make me rich!”
Sir John ordered a hundred poleaxes made for his archers. Hook, who knew how to shape wood, helped carve the long ash handles, while blacksmiths forged the heads. One side o
f each head was a heavy hammer, weighted with lead, which could be used to crush plate armor or, at the very least, knock an armored man off balance. The opposing side was an ax that, in the hands of an archer, could split a helmet as though it were made of parchment, while the head of the ax was a spike thin enough to pierce the slits of a knight’s visor. The upper shaft of each ax was sheathed in iron so an opponent could not cut through the handle. “Beautiful,” Sir John said when the first weapons were delivered. He stroked the iron-clad handle as though it were a woman’s flank. “Just beautiful.”
By late spring the news came that God had done His duty by persuading the king to make an invasion of France and so Sir John’s company marched south on roads lined with the white blossom of hawthorn hedges. Sir John was cheerful, animated by the prospect of war. He rode ahead, followed by his pages, his squire, and a standard-bearer who carried the flag of the crowned red lion with its golden star. Three carts bore provisions, short lances, armor, spare bowstaves, and sheaves of arrows. The road south led through woods that were thickly hazed with bluebells and past fields where the year’s first hay had already been cut and was laid to dry in long rows. Newly shorn sheep looked naked and thin in the meadows. More bands of men joined the road, all horsemen, all in strange livery, and all going toward the south coast where the king had summoned the men who had signed his jaggedly cut contracts. Most of the horsemen, Hook noted, were archers, outnumbering the men-at-arms by three to one. The long bows were stored in leather cases that were slung over their owners’ shoulders.
Hook was happy. Sir John’s men were his companions now. Peter Goddington, the centenar, was a fair man, tough with laggards, but warm in his approval of the men who shared his dream of creating the best company of archers in England. Thomas Evelgold was next in command and he, like Goddington, was an older man, almost thirty. He was a morose man, slower thinking than the centenar, but he was grudgingly helpful to the younger archers among whom Hook found his particular friends. There were the twins, Thomas and Matthew Scarlet, both a year younger than Hook, and Will of the Dale who could reduce the company to helpless laughter with his imitations of Sir John. The four drank together, ate together, laughed together, and competed against each other, though it was recognized among all the archers that none could outshoot Nicholas Hook. They had practiced with weapons all winter and now France was ahead and God was on their side. Father Christopher had assured them of that in a sermon preached the day before they rode. “Our lord the king’s quarrel with the French is just,” Father Christopher had said with unusual seriousness, “and our God will not abandon him. We go to right a wrong, and the forces of heaven will march with us!” Hook did not understand the quarrel except that somewhere in the king’s ancestry was a marriage that led Henry to the French throne, and perhaps he was the rightful king and perhaps he was not, but Hook did not care. He was just happy to wear the Cornewaille lion and star.
And he was happy that Melisande was one of the women chosen to ride with the company. She had a small, fine-boned mare that belonged to Sir John’s wife, the sister of the late king, and she rode it well. “We must take women with us,” Sir John had explained.
“God is merciful,” Father Christopher had murmured.
“We can’t wash our own clothes!” Sir John had said. “We can’t sew! We can’t cook! We must have women! Useful things, women. We don’t want to be like the French! Humping each other when a sheep isn’t available, so we’ll take women!” He liked Melisande to ride alongside him and chatted away to her in French, making her laugh.
“He does not really hate the French,” Melisande told Hook on the evening that they arrived near a town with a large abbey. The abbey bell was summoning the faithful to prayer, but Hook did not move. He and Melisande were sitting beside a small river that flowed placidly through lush water meadows. Across the river, two fields away, another company of men-at-arms and archers was making camp. The fires of Sir John’s men were already burning, hazing the trees and the distant abbey tower with smoke. “He just likes to be rude about the French,” Melisande said.
“About everyone.”
“He is kind inside,” Melisande said, then leaned back to rest her head on his chest. When standing she barely reached his shoulder. Hook loved the fragility of her looks, though he knew that apparent frailty was deceptive for he had learned that Melisande had the supple strength of a bowstave and, like a bow that had followed the string and so been bent into a permanent curve even when unstrung, she possessed fiercely held opinions. He loved that in her. He also feared for her.
“Maybe you shouldn’t come,” Hook said.
“Why? Because it is dangerous?”
“Yes.”
Melisande shrugged. “It is safer to be French in France than to be English, I think. If they capture Alice or Matilda then they will be raped.” Alice and Matilda were her particular friends.
“And you won’t be?” Hook asked.
Melisande said nothing for a while, perhaps thinking of Soissons. “I want to come,” she finally said.
“Why?”
“To be with you,” she said, as though the answer were obvious. “What’s a centenar?”
“Like Peter Goddington? Just a man who leads archers.”
“And a ventenar?”
“Well, a centenar leads a whole lot of archers, maybe a hundred? And a ventenar is in charge of perhaps twenty of them. They’re all sergeants.”
Melisande thought about that for a few seconds. “You should be a ventenar, Nick.”
Hook smiled, but said nothing. The river was crystal clear as it flowed over a sandy bed where water crowsfoot and cress waved languidly. Mayflies were dancing and, every now and then, a splash betrayed a feeding trout. Two swans and four cygnets swam beside the far bank and, as Hook watched them, he saw a shadow stir in the water beneath. “Don’t move,” he warned Melisande and, moving very slowly, took the cased bow from his shoulder.
“Sir John knows my father,” Melisande said suddenly.
“He does?” Hook asked, surprised. He unlaced the leather case and gently slid the bow free.
“Ghillebert,” Melisande said the name slowly, as if it was unfamiliar, “the Seigneur de Lanferelle.”
Father Michel, in France, had said Melisande’s father was the Seigneur d’Enfer, but Hook supposed he had misheard. “He’s a lord, eh?” he remarked.
“Lords have many children,” Melisande said, “et je suis une bâtarde.”
Hook said nothing. He braced the bowstave against the bole of an ash tree and bent the yew to loop the string over the upper nock.
“I am a bastard,” Melisande said bitterly. “That is why he put me in the nunnery.”
“To hide you.”
“And protect me, I think,” Melisande said. “He paid money to the abbess. He paid for my food and bed. He said I would be safe there.”
“Safe to be a servant girl?”
“My mother was a servant girl. Why not me? And I would have become a nun one day.”
“You’re not a servant girl,” Hook said, “you’re a lord’s daughter.” He took an arrow from his bag, choosing a bodkin with its long, sharp, and heavy head. He was holding the bow horizontally on his lap and now laid the arrow on the stave and notched the feathered end on the string. The shadow stirred. “How well do you know your father?” Hook asked.
“I have only met him twice,” Melisande said. “Once when I was small, and I do not remember that well, and then before I went to the nunnery. I liked him.” She paused, searching for the right English words. “In the beginning, I liked him.”
“Did he like you?” Hook asked carelessly, concentrating on the shadow rather than on Melisande. He was drawing the bow now, still holding it horizontally and unwilling to raise it vertically in case the movement sent the shadow fast upstream.
“He was so,” she paused, looking for the word, “beau. He was tall. And he has a beautiful badge. He wears a great yellow sun with golden rays. And on
the sun there is the head of…”
“An eagle,” Hook interrupted.
“Un faucon,” Melisande said.
“A falcon then,” Hook said, and remembered the long-haired man who had watched the archers being murdered in front of the church of Saint Antoine-le-Petit. “He was in Soissons,” he said harshly. He had paused with the bow partially drawn. The shadow drifted in the water and Hook thought it would vanish downstream, then it flicked its tail and was back under the far bank.
Melisande was staring up at Hook. “He was there?”
“Long black hair,” Hook said.
“I did not see him!”
“You had your head buried in my shoulder most of the time,” Hook said. “You didn’t want to look. They were torturing men. Taking their eyes. Cutting them.”
Melisande was silent a long time. Hook raised the bow slightly, then she spoke again, but in a smaller voice. “My father is called something else,” she said, “le Seigneur d’Enfer.”
“That’s the name I heard,” Hook said.
“Le Seigneur d’Enfer,” Melisande said again. “The lord of hell. It is because Lanferelle sounds like l’enfer, and l’enfer is hell, but maybe because he is so fierce in a fight. He has sent many men to hell, I think. And some to heaven too.”
Swallows flickered fast over the river and, from the corner of his eye, Hook saw the brilliant blue flash of a kingfisher’s flight. The shadow was unmoving again. He drew the cord further back, unable to pull it to the full extent because Melisande’s slender body obstructed him, but even at half draw the great war bow was a dreadful weapon.
“He is not a bad man,” Melisande said as though she tried to persuade herself of that fact.
“You don’t sound very certain,” Hook said.
“He is my father.”
“Who put you in a nunnery.”
“I did not want to go!” she said fiercely. “I told him! No! No!”
Hook smiled. “You didn’t want to be a nun, eh?”
“I knew the sisters. My mother would take me to visit them. We gave them,” she paused, looking for the English words and failing to find them, “les prunes de damas, abricots et coings.” She shrugged. “I do not know what those things are. Fruit? We gave the sisters fruit, but they were never kind to us. They were horrid.”