“Oh my,” Sir Martin appeared to wake up suddenly and his voice was reverent, the same tone he used in the parish church when he said the mass, “oh my, oh my, oh my. Oh my, just look at that little beauty.” The priest was gazing at Sarah, who had risen from her knees and was staring with a horrified expression at her grandfather’s struggles. “Oh my, God is good,” the priest said reverently.
Nicholas Hook had often wondered what angels looked like. There was a painting of angels on the wall of the village church, but it was a clumsy picture because the angels had blobs for faces and their robes and wings had become yellowed and streaked by the damp that seeped through the nave’s plaster, yet nevertheless Hook understood that angels were creatures of unearthly beauty. He thought their wings must be like a heron’s wings, only much larger, and made of feathers that would shine like the sun glowing through the morning mist. He suspected angels had golden hair and long, very clean robes of the whitest linen. He knew they were special creatures, holy beings, but in his dreams they were also beautiful girls that could haunt a boy’s thoughts. They were loveliness on gleaming wings, they were angels.
And this Lollard girl was as beautiful as Hook’s imagined angels. She had no wings, of course, and her smock was muddied and her face was distorted into a rictus by the horror she watched and by the knowledge that she too must hang, but she was still lovely. She was blue-eyed and fair-haired, had high cheekbones and skin untouched by the pox. She was a girl to haunt a boy’s dreams, or a priest’s thoughts for that matter. “See that gate, Michael Hook?” Sir Martin asked flatly. The priest had looked for the Perrill brothers to do his bidding, but they were out of earshot and so he chose the nearest archer. “Take her through the gate and keep her in the stable there.”
Nick Hook’s younger brother looked puzzled. “Take her?” he asked.
“Not take her! Not you, you cloth-brained shit-puddling idiot! Just take that girl to the tavern stables! I want to pray with her.”
“Oh! You want to pray!” Michael said, smiling.
“You want to pray with her, father?” Snoball asked with a snide chuckle.
“If she repents,” Sir Martin said piously, “she can live.” The priest was shivering and Hook did not think it was the cold. “Christ in His loving mercy allows that,” Sir Martin said, his eyes darting from the girl to Snoball, “so let us see if we can make her repent? Sir Edward?”
“Father?”
“I shall pray with the girl!” Sir Martin called, and Sir Edward did not answer. He was still gazing at the nearest unlit pyre where the Lollard leader was ignoring the priest’s words and looking up at the sky.
“Take her, young Hook,” Sir Martin ordered.
Nick Hook watched his brother take the girl’s elbow. Michael was almost as strong as Nick, yet he had a gentleness and a sincerity that reached past the girl’s terror. “Come on, lass,” he said softly, “the good father wants to pray with you. So let me take you. No one’s going to hurt you.”
Snoball sniggered as Michael led the unresisting girl through the yard gate and into the stable where the archers’ horses were tethered. The space was cold, dusty, and smelled of straw and dung. Nick Hook followed the pair. He told himself he followed so he could protect his brother, but in truth he had been prompted by the dying archer’s words, and when he reached the stable door he looked up to see a window in the far gable and suddenly, out of nowhere, a voice sounded in his head. “Take her away,” the voice said. It was a man’s voice, but not one that Nick Hook recognized. “Take her away,” the voice said again, “and heaven will be yours.”
“Heaven?” Nick Hook said aloud.
“Nick?” Michael, still holding the girl’s elbow, turned to his elder brother, but Nick Hook was gazing at that high bright window.
“Just save the girl,” the voice said, and there was no one in the stable except the brothers and Sarah, but the voice was real, and Hook was shaking. If he could just save the girl. If he could take her away. He had never felt anything like this before. He had always thought himself cursed, hated even by his own name-saint, but suddenly he knew that if he could save this girl then God would love him and God would forgive whatever had made Saint Nicholas hate him. Hook was being offered salvation. It was there, beyond the window, and it promised him a new life. No more of being the cursed Nick Hook. He knew it, yet he did not know how to take it.
“What in God’s name are you doing here?” Sir Martin snarled at Hook.
He did not answer. He was staring at the clouds beyond the window. His horse, a gray, stirred and thumped a hoof. Whose voice had he heard?
Sir Martin pushed past Nick Hook to stare at the girl. The priest smiled. “Hello, little lady,” he said, his voice hoarse, then he turned to Michael. “Strip her,” he ordered curtly.
“Strip her?” Michael asked, frowning.
“She must appear naked before her God,” the priest explained, “so our Lord and Savior can judge her as she truly is. In nakedness is truth. That’s what the scripture says, in nakedness is our truth.” Nowhere did the scriptures say that, but Sir Martin had often found the invented quote useful.
“But…” Michael was still frowning. Nick’s younger brother was notoriously slow in understanding, but even he knew that something was wrong in the winter stable.
“Do it!” the priest snarled at him.
“It’s not right,” Michael said stubbornly.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Sir Martin said angrily and he pushed Michael out of the way and grabbed the girl’s collar. She gave a short, desperate yelp that was not quite a scream, and she tried to pull away. Michael was just watching, horrified, but the echo of a mysterious voice and a vision of heaven were still in Nick Hook’s head and so he stepped one quick pace forward and drove his fist into the priest’s belly with such strength that Sir Martin folded over with a sound of half pain and half surprise.
“Nick!” Michael said, aghast at what his brother had done.
Hook had taken the girl’s elbow and half turned toward that far window. “Help!” Sir Martin shouted, his voice rasping from breathlessness and pain, “help!” Hook turned back to silence him, but Michael stepped between him and the priest.
“Nick!” Michael said again, and just then both the Perrill brothers came running.
“He hit me!” Father Martin said, sounding astonished. Tom Perrill grinned, while his younger brother Robert looked as confused as Michael. “Hold him!” the priest demanded, straightening with a look of pain on his long face, “just hold the bastard!” His voice was a half-strangled croak as he struggled for breath. “Take him outside!” he panted, “and hold him.”
Hook let himself be led into the stable yard. His brother followed and stood unhappily staring at the hanged men just beyond the open gate where a thin cold rain had begun to slant across the sky. Nick Hook was suddenly drained. He had hit a priest, a well-born priest, a man of the gentry, Lord Slayton’s own kin. The Perrill brothers were mocking him, but Hook did not hear their words, instead he heard Sarah’s smock being torn and heard her scream and heard the scream stifled and he heard the rustling of straw and he heard Sir Martin grunting and Sarah whimpering, and Hook gazed at the low clouds and at the woodsmoke that lay over the city as thick as any cloud and he knew that he was failing God. All his life Nick Hook had been told he was cursed and then, in a place of death, God had asked him to do just one thing and he had failed. He heard a great sigh go up from the marketplace and he guessed that one of the fires had been lit to usher a heretic down to the greater fires of hell, and he feared he would be going to hell himself because he had done nothing to rescue a blue-eyed angel from a black-souled priest, but then he told himself the girl was a heretic and he wondered if it had been the devil who spoke in his head. The girl was gasping now, and the gasps turned to sobs and Hook raised his face to the wind and the spitting rain.
Sir Martin, grinning like a fed stoat, came out of the stable. He had tucked his robe high about his waist
, but now let it fall. “There,” he said, “that didn’t take long. You want her, Tom?” he spoke to the older Perrill brother, “she’s yours if you want her. Juicy little thing she is, too! Just slit her throat when you’re done.”
“Not hang her, father?” Tom Perrill asked.
“Just kill the bitch,” the priest said. “I’d do it myself, but the church doesn’t kill people. We hand them over to the lay power, and that’s you, Tom. So go and hump the heretic bitch then open her throat. And you, Robert, you hold Hook. Michael, go away! You’ve nothing to do with this, go!”
Michael hesitated. “Go,” Nick Hook told his brother wearily, “just go.”
Robert Perrill held Hook’s arms behind his back. Hook could have pulled away easily enough, but he was still shaken by the voice he had heard and by his stupidity in striking Sir Martin. That was a hanging offense, yet Sir Martin wanted more than just his death and, as Robert Perrill held Hook, Sir Martin began hitting him. The priest was not strong, he did not have the great muscles of an archer, but he possessed spite and he had sharp bony knuckles that he drove viciously into Hook’s face. “You piece of bitch-spawned shit,” Sir Martin spat, and hit again, trying to pulp Hook’s eyes. “You’re a dead man, Hook,” the priest shouted. “I’ll have you looking like that!” Sir Martin pointed at the nearest fire. Smoke was thick around the stake, but flames were bright at the pile’s base and, through the gray smoke, a figure could be seen straining like a bent bow. “You bastard!” Sir Martin said, hitting Hook again, “your mother was an open-legged whore and she shat you like the whore she was.” He hit Hook again and then a flare of fire streaked in the pyre’s smoke and a scream sounded in the marketplace like the squeal of a boar being gelded.
“What in God’s name is happening?” Sir Edward had heard the priest’s anger and had come into the stable yard to discover its cause.
The priest shuddered. His knuckles were bloody. He had managed to cut Hook’s lips and start blood from Hook’s nose, but little else. His eyes were wide open, full of anger and indignation, but Hook thought he saw the devil-madness deep inside them. “Hook hit me,” Sir Martin explained, “and he’s to be killed.”
Sir Edward looked from the snarling priest to the bloodied archer. “That’s for Lord Slayton to decide,” Sir Edward said.
“Then he’ll decide to hang him, won’t he?” Sir Martin snapped.
“Did you hit Sir Martin?” Sir Edward asked Hook.
Hook just nodded. Was it God who had spoken to him in the stable, he wondered, or the devil?
“He hit me,” Sir Martin said and then, with a sudden spasm, he ripped Hook’s jupon clean down its center, parting the moon from the stars. “He’s not worthy of that badge,” the priest said, throwing the torn surcoat into the mud. “Find some rope,” he ordered Robert Perrill, “rope or bowcord, then tie his hands! And take his sword!”
“I’ll take it,” Sir Edward said. He pulled Hook’s sword that belonged to Lord Slayton from its scabbard. “Give him to me, Perrill,” he ordered, then drew Hook into the yard’s gateway. “What happened?”
“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.
PART ONE
Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian
ONE
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.