“Not sure he likes many people, lord,” Hook answered evasively.
Lord Slayton stared at Hook broodingly. “And you’re right about Will Snoball,” he finally said, “he’s weakening. We all get old, Hook, and I’ll be needing a new centenar. You understand me?”
A centenar was the man who commanded a company of archers and William Snoball had held the job for as long as Hook remembered. Snoball was also the manor’s steward, and the two offices had made him the richest of all Lord Slayton’s men. Hook nodded. “I understand, lord,” he muttered.
“Sir Martin believes Tom Perrill should be my next centenar. And he fears I’ll appoint you, Hook. I can’t imagine why he would think that, can you?”
Hook looked into his lordship’s face. He was tempted to ask about his mother and how well his lordship had known her, but he resisted. “No, lord,” he said humbly instead.
“So when you go to London, Hook, tread carefully. Sir Martin will accompany you.”
“London!”
“I have a summons,” Lord Slayton explained. “I’m required to send my archers to London. Ever been to London?”
“No, my lord.”
“Well, you’re going. I don’t know why, the summons doesn’t say. But my archers are going because the king commands it. And maybe it’s war? I don’t know. But if it is war, Hook, then I don’t want my men killing each other. For God’s sake, Hook, don’t make me hang you.”
“I’ll try not, my lord.”
“Now go. Tell Snoball to come in. Go.”
Hook went.
It was a January day. It was still cold. The sky was low and twilight dark, though it was only mid-morning. At dawn there had been flurries of snow, but it had not settled. There was frost on the thatched roofs and skins of cat ice on the few puddles that had not been trampled into mud. Nick Hook, long-legged and broad-chested and dark-haired and scowling, sat outside the tavern with seven companions, including his brother and the two Perrill brothers. Hook wore knee-high boots with spurs, two pairs of breeches to keep out the cold, a woollen shirt, a padded leather jerkin, and a short linen tunic, which was blazoned with Lord Slayton’s golden crescent moon and three golden stars. All eight men wore leather belts with pouches, long daggers and swords, and all wore the same livery, though a stranger would need to look hard to discern the moon and stars because the colors had faded and the tunics were dirty.
No one did look hard, because armed men in livery meant trouble. And these eight men were archers. They carried neither bows nor arrow bags, but the breadth of their chests showed these were men who could draw the cord of a war bow a full yard back and make it look easy. They were bowmen, and they were one cause of the fear that pervaded London’s streets. The fear was as pungent as the stench of sewage, as prevalent as the smell of woodsmoke. House doors were closed. Even the beggars had vanished, and the few folk who walked the city were among those who had provoked the fear, yet even they chose to pass on the farther side of the street from the eight archers.
“Sweet Jesus Christ,” Nick Hook broke the silence.
“Go to church if you want to say prayers, you bastard,” Tom Perrill said.
“I’ll shit in your mother’s face first,” Hook snarled.
“Quiet, you two,” William Snoball intervened.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Hook growled. “London’s not our place!”
“Well, you are here,” Snoball said, “so stop bleating.”
The tavern stood on a corner where a narrow street led into a wide market square. The inn’s sign, a carved and painted model of a bull, hung from a massive beam that was anchored in the tavern’s gable and reached out to a stout post sunk in the marketplace. Other archers were visible around the square, men in different liveries, all fetched to London by their lords, though where those lords were no one knew. Two priests carrying bundles of parchments hurried by on the street’s far side. Somewhere deeper in the city a bell started to toll. One of the priests glanced at the archers wearing the moon and stars, then almost tripped as Tom Perrill spat.
“What in Christ’s name are we doing here?” Robert Perrill asked.
“Christ is not telling us,” Snoball answered sourly, “but I am assured we do His work.”
Christ’s work consisted of guarding the corner where the street joined the marketplace, and the archers had been ordered to let no man or woman pass them by, either into the market square or out of it. That command did not apply to priests, nor to mounted gentry, but only to the common folk, and those common folk possessed the wisdom to stay indoors. Seven hand-drawn carts had come down the street, pulled by ragged men and loaded with firewood, barrels, stones, and long timbers, but the carts had been accompanied by mounted men-at-arms who wore the royal livery and the archers had stayed still and silent while they passed.
A plump girl with a scarred face brought a jug of ale from the tavern. She filled the archers’ pots and her face showed nothing as Snoball groped beneath her heavy skirts. She waited till he had finished, then held out a hand.
“No, no, darling,” Snoball said, “I did you a favor so you should reward me.” The girl turned and went indoors. Michael, Hook’s younger brother, stared at the table and Tom Perrill sneered at the young man’s embarrassment, but said nothing. There was little joy to be had in provoking Michael, who was too good-hearted to take offense.
Hook watched the royal men-at-arms who had stopped the handcarts in the center of the marketplace where two long stakes were stood upright in two big barrels. The stakes were being fixed in place by packing the barrels with stones and gravel. A man-at-arms tested one of the stakes, trying to tip or dislodge it, but the work had evidently been well done, for he could not shift the tall timber. He jumped down and the laborers began stacking bundles of firewood around the twin barrels.
“Royal firewood,” Snoball said, “burns brighter.”
“Does it really?” Michael Hook asked. He tended to believe everything he was told and waited eagerly for an answer, but the other archers ignored his question.
“At last,” Tom Perrill said instead, and Hook saw a small crowd emerging from a church at the far side of the marketplace. The crowd was composed of ordinary-looking folk, but it was surrounded by soldiers, monks, and priests, and one of those priests now headed toward the tavern called the Bull.
“Here’s Sir Martin,” Snoball said, as if his companions would not recognize the priest who, as he drew nearer, grinned. Hook felt a tremor of hatred as he saw the eel-thin Sir Martin with his loping stride, lopsided face, and his strange, intense eyes that some thought looked beyond this world to the next, though opinion varied whether Sir Martin gazed at hell or heaven. Hook’s grandmother had no doubts. “He was bitten by the devil’s dog,” she liked to say, “and if he hadn’t been born gentry he’d have been hanged by now.”
The archers stood with grudging respect as the priest drew near. “God’s work waits on you, boys,” Sir Martin greeted them. His dark hair was gray at the sides and thin on top. He had not shaved for some days and his long chin was covered in white stubble that reminded Hook of frost. “We need a ladder,” Sir Martin said, “and Sir Edward’s bringing the ropes. Nice to see the gentry working, isn’t it? We need a long ladder. There has to be one somewhere.”
“A ladder,” Will Snoball said, as if he had never heard of such a thing.
“A long one,” Sir Martin said, “long enough to reach that beam.” He jerked his head at the sign of the bull over their heads. “Long, long.” He said the last words distractedly, as if he were already forgetting what business he was about.
“Look for a ladder,” Will Snoball told two of the archers, “a long one.”
“No short ladders for God’s work,” Sir Martin said, snapping his attention back to the archers. He rubbed his thin hands together and grimaced at Hook. “You look ill, Hook,” he added happily, as if hoping Nick Hook were dying.
“The ale tastes funny,” Hook said.
“Tha
t’s because it’s Friday,” the priest said, “and you should abstain from ale on Wednesdays and Fridays. Your name-saint, the blessed Nicholas, rejected his mother’s teats on Wednesdays and Fridays, and there’s a lesson in that! There can be no pleasures for you, Hook, on Wednesdays and Fridays. No ale, no joy, and no tits, that is your fate forever. And why, Hook, why?” Sir Martin paused and his long face twisted in a malevolent grin. “Because you have supped on the sagging tits of evil! I will not have mercy on her children, the scriptures say, because their mother hath played the harlot!”
Tom Perrill sniggered. “What are we doing, father?” Will Snoball asked tiredly.
“God’s work, Master Snoball, God’s holy work. Go to it.”
A ladder was found as Sir Edward Derwent crossed the market square with four ropes looped about his broad shoulders. Sir Edward was a man-at-arms and wore the same livery as the archers, though his jupon was cleaner and its colors were brighter. He was a squat, thick-chested man with a face disfigured at the battle of Shrewsbury where a poleax had ripped open his helmet, crushed a cheekbone and sliced off an ear. “Bell ropes,” he explained, tossing the heavy coils onto the ground. “Need them tied to the beam, and I’m not climbing any ladder.” Sir Edward commanded Lord Slayton’s men-at-arms and he was as respected as he was feared. “Hook, you do it,” Sir Edward ordered.
Hook climbed the ladder and tied the bell ropes to the beam. He used the knot with which he would have looped a hempen cord about a bowstave’s nock, though the ropes, being thicker, were much harder to manipulate. When he was done he shinned down the last rope to show that it was tied securely.
“Let’s get this done and over,” Sir Edward said sourly, “and then maybe we can leave this goddamned place. Whose ale is this?”
“Mine, Sir Edward,” Robert Perrill said.
“Mine now,” Sir Edward said, and drained the pot. He was dressed in a mail coat over a leather jerkin, all of it covered with the starry jupon. A sword hung at his waist. There was nothing elaborate about the weapon. The blade, Hook knew, was undecorated, the hilt was plain steel, and the handle was two grips of walnut bolted to the tang. The sword was a tool of Sir Edward’s trade, and he had used it to batter down the rebel whose poleax had taken half his face.
The small crowd had been herded by soldiers and priests into the center of the marketplace where most of them knelt and prayed. There were maybe sixty of them, men and women, young and old. “Can’t burn them all,” Sir Martin said regretfully, “so we’re sending most to hell at the rope’s end.”
“If they’re heretics,” Sir Edward grumbled, “they should all be burned.”
“If God wished that,” Sir Martin said with some asperity, “then God would have provided sufficient firewood.”
More people were appearing now. Fear still pervaded the city, but folk somehow sensed that the greatest moment of danger was over, and so they came to the marketplace and Sir Martin ordered the archers to let them pass. “They should see this for themselves,” the priest explained. There was a sullenness in the gathering crowd, their sympathies plainly aligned with the prisoners and not the guards, though here and there a priest or friar preached an extemporary sermon to justify the day’s events. The doomed, the preachers explained, were enemies of Christ. They were weeds among the righteous wheat. They had been given a chance to repent, but had refused that mercy and so must face their eternal fate.
“Who are they anyway?” Hook asked.
“Lollards,” Sir Edward said.
“What’s a Lollard?”
“A heretic, you piece of slime,” Snoball said happily, “and the bastards were supposed to gather here and start a rebellion against our gracious king, but instead they’re going to hell.”
“They don’t look like rebels,” Hook said. Most of the prisoners were middle-aged, some were old, while a handful was very young. There were women and girls among them.
“Doesn’t matter what they look like,” Snoball said, “they’re heretics and they have to die.”
“It’s God’s will,” Sir Martin snarled.
“But what makes them heretics?” Hook asked.
“Oh, we are curious today,” Sir Martin said sourly.
“I’d like to know that too,” Michael said.
“Because the church says they’re heretics,” Sir Martin snapped, then appeared to relent of his tone. “Do you believe, Michael Hook, that when I raise the host it turns into the most holy and beloved and mystical flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ?”
“Yes, father, of course!”
“Well, they don’t believe that,” the priest said, jerking his head at the Lollards kneeling in the mud, “they believe the bread stays bread, which makes them turds-for-brains piss-shits. And do you believe that our blessed father the Pope is God’s vicar on earth?”
“Yes, father,” Michael said.
“Thank Christ for that, or else I’d have to burn you.”
“I thought there were two popes?” Snoball put in.
Sir Martin ignored that. “Ever seen a sinner burn, Michael Hook?” he asked.
“No, father.”
Sir Martin grinned lasciviously. “They scream, young Hook, like a boar being gelded. They do scream so!” He turned suddenly and thrust a long bony finger into Nick Hook’s chest. “And you should listen to those screams, Nicholas Hook, for they are the liturgy of hell. And you,” he prodded Hook’s chest again, “are hell-bound.” The priest whirled around, arms suddenly outspread, so that he reminded Hook of a great dark-winged bird. “Avoid hell, boys!” he called enthusiastically, “avoid it! No tits on Wednesdays and Fridays, and do God’s work diligently every day!”
More ropes had been slung from other signposts about the marketplace, and now soldiers roughly divided the prisoners into groups that were pushed toward the makeshift gallows. One man began shouting to his friends, telling them to have faith in God and that they would all meet in heaven before this day was over, and he went on shouting till a soldier in royal livery broke his jaw with a mail-shod fist. The broken-jawed man was one of the two selected for the fires and Hook, standing apart from his comrades, watched as the man was hoisted onto the stone-and gravel-filled barrel and tied to the stake. More firewood was piled around his feet.
“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.