The men-at-arms and the archers sat at the tunnel’s edge, drawing in their feet to let the laborers carry out the excavated spoil and bring in the new timbers to support the roof. They listened to the sounds of the French miners. Those noises were louder, inescapable and ominous. They came from the north where the enemy had to be driving a counter-mine to intercept the English work and, in the dust-shrouded light of the small flames, Hook constantly watched the far wall, expecting to see a great hole appear through which an armored enemy would erupt. Sir John spent much of the afternoon in the tunnel, his sword drawn and face shadowed. “We have to fight them back into their hole,” he said, “and then collapse their work. Jesus, it smells like a midden down here!”
“It is a midden,” Dafydd ap Traharn said. Some of the laborers had fallen ill and constantly fouled the wet slurry underfoot.
Sir John left late in the day and, an hour later, sent other men to relieve the mine’s guards. Those new men came stooping down the tunnel, their shadows flickering monstrously in the half darkness. “Christ on his cross,” a voice grumbled, “can’t breathe this air.”
“You have crossbows for us?” another voice demanded.
“We’ve got them,” Hook acknowledged, “and they’re cocked.”
“Leave them for us,” the man said, then peered at the archers he was relieving. “Hook? Is that you?”
“Sir Edward!” Hook said. He laid the crossbow on the floor and stood, smiling.
“It is you!” Sir Edward Derwent, Lord Slayton’s man who, in London, had saved Hook from the manor court and its inevitable punishment, was smiling back in the dirty light. “I heard you were here,” he said, “how are you?”
“Still alive, Sir Edward,” Hook said, grinning.
“God be praised for that, though God knows how anyone survives down here.” Sir Edward, his scar-ravaged face half hidden by his helmet, listened to the ominous noises. “They sound close!”
“We think they are,” Hook said.
“It’s deceptive,” Dafydd ap Traharn put in. “They could be ten paces away still. It’s hard to tell with sounds underground.”
“So they could be a hand’s breadth away?” Sir Edward inquired sourly.
“Oh, they could be!” the Welshman said dourly.
Sir Edward looked at the drawn crossbows. “And the idea is to welcome them with bolts?” he asked, “then kill the bastards?”
“The idea is to keep me alive,” Dafydd ap Traharn said, “and you’re blocking the tunnel, you are! There are too many of you! There’s work to be done.”
Sir John’s men-at-arms had already gone, and now Hook sent his archers after them. He lingered a moment. “I wish you a quiet night,” he said to Sir Edward.
“Dear God, I echo that prayer,” Sir Edward said. He grinned. “It’s good to see you, Hook.”
“A pleasure to see you, sir,” Hook said, “and thank you.”
“Go and rest, man,” Sir Edward said.
Hook nodded. He hefted his poleax and, with a farewell nod to Dafydd ap Traharn, edged past Sir Edward’s men, one of whom tried to trip him and Hook saw the lantern jaw and sunken eyes and, for a moment, in the half darkness, he thought it was Sir Martin, then realized it was the priest’s elder son, Tom Perrill. Both brothers were there, stooping under the beams, but Hook ignored them, knowing that neither would attack him while Sir Edward was present.
He trudged up the tunnel toward the fading daylight far ahead. He was thinking of Melisande, of the stew she would have ready, and of songs around the campfire when the world shattered.
Noise thudded about his ears. It started as a thunderous growl that billowed just behind him, then there was a rending noise as though the earth itself was splitting apart, and he turned to see dust boiling toward him, a dark cloud of dust rolling in the shaft’s dark light, and men like monstrous shadows were lumbering in that darkness. There was shouting, the sound of steel on armor, and a scream. The first scream.
The French had broken through.
Hook instinctively started back toward the fighting, then remembered the barrels and wondered if he should block the tunnel’s entrance. He hesitated. A man was screeching from the dark, a horrible noise, like the sound of a clumsily gelded beast. There was another rumbling and Hook had a glimpse of more men dropping from the tunnel’s roof, then more dust surged toward him, obliterating his sight, but in the dust a figure lurched toward him. It was a man-at-arms, sword drawn. His visor was closed, he held his sword two-handed, and somehow the dust and half-light made him look like some enormous earth-giant come from nightmare’s bowels. His plate armor was coated in chalk and earth, and Hook stared, petrified by the unnatural vision, but then the man bellowed and that sound startled Hook to reality just as the man-at-arms lunged the sword at his belly. Hook twisted to one side and rammed the poleax straight at the steel-shrouded face. The spear point slid off the pig-snouted visor, but the top edge of the heavy hammer cracked into the helmet, crushing the metal. Hook had used all his archer’s strength in that blow and the earth-giant reeled backward, blood welling from his visor’s holes, and Hook remembered all those lessons in Sir John’s meadows and closed on the man fast, getting inside the sword’s reach so the enemy could not swing the blade, and he rammed the poleax like a quarterstaff, driving the man down onto the floor. Hook had no room to swing the poleax, but strength made up for that and he slammed the ax blade onto the man’s sword elbow, breaking it, then slid the spear point into the gap between the enemy’s helmet and breastplate. The Frenchman wore an aventail, a mail hood, to protect that gap, but the steel spike ripped easily through the links and gouged into the man’s throat, and then more men were coming toward Hook as the earth-giant, shrunken to normal size now, writhed on the mine floor where his blood spilled into the chalk, black draining into white.
The men coming up the tunnel were fighting each other. Hook dragged the blade free of the dying earth-giant and rammed the spear point at a man in a strange surcoat. The blade glanced off plate armor, ripping the coat and the man turned, beast-faced visor pointing at Hook, and brought his sword around, but it caught on one of the mine’s timber supports and Hook lunged again with the poleax, this time hooking the ax blade around the man’s ankle and then pulling hard so that the Frenchman lost his balance. A Welsh miner staggered toward Hook, guts spilling from an opened belly. Hook shouldered him aside and pushed the spear point under the fallen man’s breastplate, the gap just visible through the torn linen. He pushed and twisted the long haft, trying to drive the blade up into the man’s stomach and chest, but something blocked the blade, and then another rush of men pushed him backward. They were Lord Slayton’s men, retreating from the French, though a handful of the enemy was among them. Men wrestled in the dark, tripped over the dead and the dying, and slipped in sewage. Two men-at-arms forced Hook back against the side of the tunnel and he again thrust the poleax like a quarterstaff, two-handed, but a rush of men pushed his enemies aside as archers and miners fled to the sow.
“Hold them!” Sir Edward’s voice bellowed from farther down the mine.
The barrels. Hook, momentarily free of enemies, turned and ran toward the mine entrance. He made it to where the shaft sloped gently up toward the surface, but there a foot tripped him and he sprawled heavily onto the chalk. He twisted aside and tried to climb to his feet, but a boot kicked him in the belly. Hook twisted again to see Tom and Robert Perrill standing over him.
“Quick,” Tom Perrill shouted at his brother.
Robert lifted a sword, point downward, aimed at Hook’s throat.
“I’ll have your woman,” Tom Perrill said, though Hook could scarcely hear him over the shouts and screams echoing up the tunnel. More shouts sounded from the sow where attackers fought a bitter sudden battle against startled defenders. Then Robert Perrill’s sword came down and Hook rolled again, throwing himself against his enemies’ feet and he heaved up so that Robert Perrill tumbled against the far wall and the poleax was still in Ho
ok’s hand as he scrambled to his feet and turned on Thomas Perrill, who simply ran away.
“Coward!” Hook shouted, and looked down to Robert who was flailing the sword uselessly and screaming, screaming, and Hook suddenly understood why. The earth was quivering as another scream, thin as a blade, sounded in Hook’s ears.
“Down!” Saint Crispinian said.
And the earth was shaking now, and the thin scream was lost in thunder, only the thunder was not from the sky, but from the earth, and Hook obeyed the saint, crouching down beside Robert Perrill as the tunnel roof collapsed.
It seemed to last forever. Timbers cracked, the noise groaned and boomed, and the earth fell.
Hook closed his eyes. The thin scream was back, but it was inside his head. It was fear, his own scream, his terror of death. He was breathing dust. At the last day, he knew, the dead would rise from the earth. They would come from their graves, the earth making way for their flesh and bones, and they would face east toward the shining holy city of Jerusalem, and the sky in the east would be brighter than the sun and a great terror would swamp the newly resurrected dead as they stood in their winding sheets. There would be screaming and crying, folk flinching from the sudden dazzle of new light, but all the dead priests of the parish would have been buried with their feet toward the west so that when they rose from their tombs they would face their frightened congregations and could call out reassurance. And for some reason, as the earth collapsed to make Hook’s grave, he thought of Sir Martin, and wondered whether that twisted, sour, long-jawed face would be the first he would see on the last day when trumpets filled the heavens and God came in glory to take His people.
A roof timber slammed down, and the earth fell and Hook was crouched and the thunder was all around him and the scream in his head died to a whimper.
And then there was silence.
Sudden, utter, black silence.
Hook breathed.
“Oh, God,” Robert Perrill moaned.
Something pressed on Hook’s back. It was heavy, and seemed immovable, but it was not crushing him. The darkness was absolute.
“Oh, God, please,” Perrill said.
The earth shuddered again and there was a muffled bang. A gun, Hook thought, and now he could even hear voices, but they were very far off. His mouth was full of grit. He spat.
The poleax was still in Hook’s right hand, but he could not move it. The weapon was trapped by something. He let go of it and felt around him, conscious that he was in a small, tight space. His fingers groped across Perrill’s head. “Help me,” Perrill said.
Hook said nothing.
He felt behind him and realized a roof timber had half fallen and somehow left this small space where he crouched and breathed. The timber slanted down and it was that rough oak that was pressing into his spine. “What do I do?” he asked aloud.
“You’re not far from the surface,” Saint Crispinian said.
“You must help me,” Perrill said.
If I move I die, Hook thought.
“Nick! Help me,” Perrill said, “please!”
“Just push up,” Saint Crispinian said.
“Show some courage,” Saint Crispin said in his harsher voice.
“For God’s sake, help me,” Perrill moaned.
“Move to your right,” Saint Crispinian said, “and don’t be frightened.”
Hook moved slowly. Earth fell.
“Now dig your way out,” Saint Crispinian said, “like a mole.”
“Moles die,” Hook said, and he wanted to explain how they trapped moles by blocking their tunnels and then digging out the frightened animals, but the saint did not want to listen.
“You’re not going to die,” the saint said impatiently, “not if you dig.”
So Hook pushed upward, scrabbling at the earth with both hands, and the soil caved in, filling his mouth and he wanted to scream, but he could not scream, and he pushed with his legs, using all the strength in his body, and the earth collapsed around him and he was certain he would die here, except that suddenly, quite suddenly, he was breathing clean air. His grave had been very shallow, nothing but a shroud of fallen soil and he was half standing in open air and was astonished to discover that full night had not yet fallen. It seemed to be raining, except the sky was clear, and then he realized the French were shooting crossbow bolts from the barbican and from the half-wrecked walls. They were not shooting at him, but at men peering from the English trenches and around the edges of the sow.
Hook was up to his waist in earth. He reached down beside his right leg and took hold of Robert Perrill’s leather jerkin. He pulled, and the earth was loose enough to let him drag the choking archer up into the last of the daylight. A crossbow bolt thumped into the soil a few inches from Hook and he went very still.
He was in what looked like a crude trench and the high sides of the trench gave him some protection from the French bolts. The town’s defenders were cheering. They had seen the tunnel’s collapse and they saw the English trying to rescue anyone who might have survived the catastrophe and so they were filling the twilight with crossbow bolts to drive those rescuers back.
“Oh, God,” Robert Perrill sighed.
“You’re alive,” Hook said.
“Nick?”
“We have to wait,” Hook said.
Robert Perrill choked and spat out earth. “Wait?”
“Can’t move till dark,” Hook said, “they’re shooting at us.”
“My brother!”
“He ran away,” Hook said. He wondered what had happened to Sir Edward. Had that deeper part of the mine collapsed? Or had the French killed all the men in the tunnel? The enemy had driven their own shaft above the English excavation and then dropped into the tunnel and Hook imagined the sudden fight, the death in the darkness, and the pain of dying in the ready-made grave. “You were going to kill me,” he said to Robert Perrill.
Perrill said nothing. He was half lying on the trench floor, but his legs were still buried. He had lost his sword.
“You were going to kill me,” Hook said again.
“My brother was.”
“You held the sword,” Hook said.
Perrill wiped dirt from his face. “I’m sorry, Nick,” he said.
Hook snorted, said nothing.
“Sir Martin said he’d pay us,” Perrill admitted.
“Your father?” Hook sneered.
Perrill hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”
“Because he hates me?”
“Your mother rejected him,” Perrill said.
Hook laughed. “And your mother whored herself,” he said flatly.
“He told her she’d go to heaven,” Perrill said, “that if you do it with a priest you go to heaven. That’s what he said.”
“He’s mad,” Hook said flatly, “moon-touched mad.”
Perrill ignored that. “He gave her money, he still does, and he’ll give us money.”
“To kill me?” Hook asked, though the French were trying hard enough to save Sir Martin the trouble. The crossbow bolts were thudding and spitting, some tumbling end over end down the crude trench made by the collapsed tunnel.
“He wants your woman,” Robert Perrill said.
“How much is he paying you?”
“A mark each,” Perrill said, eager to help Hook now.
A mark. One hundred and sixty pennies, or three hundred and twenty pence if both brothers were paid. Fifty-three days’ pay for an archer. The price of Hook’s life and Melisande’s misery. “So you have to kill me?” Hook asked, “then take my girl?”
“He wants that.”
“He’s an evil mad bastard,” Hook said.
“He can be kind,” Perrill said pathetically. “Do you remember John Luttock’s daughter?”
“Of course I remember her.”
“He took her away, but he paid John in the end, gave him the girl’s dowry.”
“A hundred and sixty pennies for raping her?”
“No!” Perri
ll was puzzled by the question. “I think it was two pounds, might have been more. John was happy.”
The light was fading fast now. The French had saved their loaded guns for the moment when their counter-mine pierced the English tunnel and now they fired shot after shot from Harfleur’s walls. The smoke billowed like thunderclouds to darken the already dark sky as the gun-stones bounced and thudded off the sow’s stout flanks.
“Robert!” a voice shouted from the sow.
“That’s Tom!” Robert Perrill said, recognizing his brother’s voice. He took a breath to call back, but Hook stopped his mouth with a hand.
“Keep quiet,” Hook snarled. A crossbow bolt tumbled down the trench and smacked into Hook’s mail. It had lost its force and bounced away as another bolt struck sparks from a lump of flint nearby. “What happens now?” Hook asked, taking his hand away from Robert Perrill’s mouth.
“What do you mean?”
“I take you back and you try and kill me again.”
“No!” Perrill said. “Get me out of here, Nick! I can’t move!”
“So what happens now?” Hook asked again. Crossbow bolts were cracking into the sow so frequently that it sounded like hail on a timber roof.
“I won’t kill you,” Perrill said.
“What should I do?” Hook asked.
“Pull me out, Nick, please,” Perrill said.
“I wasn’t talking to you. What should I do?”