Sir John ordered his archers to go a half-mile north to where a straggling hedge and ditch snaked between two wide pastures. “If the goddam French come,” Sir John said bleakly, “just kill them.”
“You expecting their army, Sir John?” Thomas Evelgold asked.
“The one that was tracking us along the river?” Sir John asked, “those bastards will get here soon enough. But their larger army? God only knows. Let’s hope they think we’re still south of the river.”
And even if it was only the smaller army that came, Hook thought, these few archers of the vanguard could not hope to stop it. He sat by a stretch of flooded ditch, beneath a dead alder, staring north, his mind wandering. He had been a bad brother, he decided. He had never looked after Michael properly and, if he was truthful with himself, he would admit that his brother’s trusting character and unending optimism had grated on him. He gave a nod when Thomas Scarlet, who had lost his own twin brother to Lanferelle’s sword, squatted beside him. “I’m sorry about Michael,” Scarlet said awkwardly, “he was a good lad.”
“He was,” Hook said.
“Matt was too.”
“Aye, he was. A good archer.”
“He was,” Scarlet said, “he was.”
They looked north in silence. Sir John had said that the first evidence of a French force would be mounted scouts, but no horsemen were visible.
“Michael always snatched at the string,” Hook said. “I tried to teach him, but he couldn’t stop it. He always snatched. Spoiled his aim, it did.”
“It does,” Scarlet said.
“He never learned,” Hook said, “and he didn’t steal that goddamned box either.”
“He didn’t seem like a thief.”
“He wasn’t! But I know who did steal it, and I’ll cut his goddam throat.”
“Don’t hang for it, Nick.”
Hook grimaced. “If the French catch us, it won’t matter, will it? I’ll either be hanged or chopped down.” Hook had a sudden vision of the archers dying in their tortured agony in front of the little church in Soissons. He shivered.
“But we’ve crossed the river,” Scarlet said firmly, “and that’s good. How far now?”
“Father Christopher says it’s a week’s marching from here, maybe a day or two longer.”
“That’s what they said a couple of weeks ago,” Scarlet said ruefully, “but doesn’t matter. We can go hungry for a week.”
Geoffrey Horrocks, the youngest archer, brought a helmet filled with hazelnuts. “Found them up the hedge,” he said, “you want to share them out, sergeant?” he asked Hook.
“You do it, lad. Tell them it’s supper.”
“And tomorrow’s breakfast,” Scarlet said.
“If I had a net we could catch some sparrows,” Hook said.
“Sparrow pie,” Scarlet said wistfully.
They fell silent. The rain had stopped, though the keen wind was chilling the wet archers to the bone. A flock of black starlings, so thick that they looked like a writhing cloud, rose and fell two fields away. Behind Hook, far across the river, men labored to remake the causeways.
“He was a grown man, you know.”
“What did you say, Tom?” Hook asked, startled from half-waking thoughts.
“Nothing,” Scarlet said, “I was falling asleep till you woke me.”
“He was a very good man,” the voice said quietly, “and he’s resting in heaven now.”
Saint Crispinian, Hook thought, and his view of the country was misted by tears. You’re still with me, he wanted to say.
“In heaven there are no tears,” the saint went on, “and no sickness. There’s no dying and no masters. There’s no hunger. Michael is in joy.”
“You all right, Nick?” Tom Scarlet asked.
“I’m all right,” Hook said, and thought that Crispinian knew all about brothers. He had suffered and died with his own brother, Crispin, and they were both with Michael now, and somehow that seemed good.
It took the best part of the day to restore the two causeways and then the army began to cross in two long lines of horses and wagons and archers and servants and women. The king, resplendent in armor and crown, galloped past Hook’s ditch. He was followed by a score of nobles who curbed their horses and, like Hook, gazed northward. But the French army that had been keeping pace along the river’s northern bank had fallen far behind and there was no enemy in sight. The English were across the river and now had entered territory claimed by the Duke of Burgundy, though it was still France. But between the army and England there were now no major obstacles unless the French army intervened.
“We march on,” Henry told his commanders.
They would march north again, north and west. They would march toward Calais, toward England and to safety. They marched.
They left the wide River Somme behind, but next day, because the army was footsore, sick, and hungry, the king ordered a halt. The rain had cleared and the sun shone through wispy clouds. The army was now in well-wooded country so there was fuel for fires and the encampment took on a holiday air as men hung their clothes to dry on makeshift hurdles. Sentries were set, but it seemed as though England’s army was all alone in the vastness of France. Not one Frenchman appeared. Men scavenged the woods for nuts, mushrooms, and berries. Hook hoped to find a deer or a boar, but the animals, like the enemy, were nowhere to be seen.
“We might just have escaped,” Father Christopher greeted Hook on his return from his abortive hunt.
“The king must think so,” Hook said.
“Why?”
“Giving us a day’s halt?”
“Our gracious king,” the priest said, “is so mad that he might just be hoping the French will catch us.”
“Mad? Like the French king?”
“The French king is really mad,” Father Christopher said, “no, our king is just convinced of God’s favor.”
“Is that madness?”
Father Christopher paused as Melisande came to join them. She leaned on Hook, saying nothing. She was thinner than Hook had ever seen her, but the whole army was thin now; thin, hungry, and ill. Somehow Hook and his wife had both avoided the bowel-emptying sickness, though many others had caught the disease and the camp stank of it. Hook put his arm about her, holding her close and thinking suddenly that she had become the most precious thing in all his world. “I hope to God we have escaped,” Hook said.
“And our king half hopes that,” Father Christopher said, “and half hopes that he can prove God’s favor.”
“And that’s his madness?”
“Beware of certainty. There are men in the French army, Hook, who are as convinced as Henry that God is on their side. They’re good men too. They pray, they give alms, they confess their sins, and they vow never to sin again. They are very good men. Can they be wrong in their conviction?”
“You tell me, father,” Hook said.
Father Christopher sighed. “If I understood God, Hook, I would understand everything because God is everything. He is the stars and the sand, the wind and the calm, the sparrow and the sparrowhawk. He knows everything, He knows my fate and He knows your fate, and if I understood all that, what would I be?”
“You would be God,” Melisande said.
“And that I cannot be,” Father Christopher said, “because we cannot comprehend everything. Only God does that, so beware of a man who says he knows God’s will. He is like a horse that believes it controls its rider.”
“And our king believes that?”
“He believes he is God’s favorite,” Father Christopher said, “and perhaps he is. He is a king, after all, anointed and blessed.”
“God made him a king,” Melisande said.
“His father’s sword made him a king,” Father Christopher said tartly, “but, of course, God could have guided that sword.” He made the sign of the cross. “Yet there are those,” he spoke softly now, “who say his father had no right to the throne. And the sins of the fathers are visited on
their sons.”
“You’re saying…” Hook began, then checked his tongue because the conversation was veering dangerously close to treason.
“I’m saying,” Father Christopher said firmly, “that I pray we get home to England before the French find us.”
“They’ve lost us, father,” Hook said, hoping he was right.
Father Christopher smiled gently. “They may not know where we are, Hook, but they know where we’re going. So they don’t need to find us, do they? All they need do is get ahead of us and let us find them.”
“And we’re resting for the day,” Hook said grimly.
“So we are,” the priest said, “which means we must pray that our enemy is at least two days’ march behind us.”
Next day they rode on. Hook was one of the scouts who ranged two miles ahead of the vanguard and looked for the enemy. He liked being a scout. It meant he could put his sharpened stake on a wagon and ride free in front of the army. The clouds were thickening again and the wind was cold. There had been a frost whitening the grass when the camp stirred, though it had vanished quickly enough. The beech leaves had turned to a dull red-gold and the oaks to the color of bronze, while some trees had already shed their foliage. The lower pastures were half flooded from the recent rain, while the fields that had been deep-plowed for winter wheat showed long streaks of silvery water between the ridges left by the plowshare. Hook’s men were following a drover’s path that led past villages, but the hovels were all empty. There was no livestock and no grain. Someone, he thought, knew the English were on this road and had stripped the countryside bare, but whoever had organized that deprivation had vanished. There was no sign of an enemy.
It began to rain again at midday. It was just a drizzle, but it penetrated every gap in Hook’s clothing. Raker, his horse, went slowly. The whole army was going slowly, incapable of speed. They passed a town and Hook, so dulled now to what he saw, scarce looked at the walls with their brightly defiant banners. He just rode on, following the road, leaving the town and its battlements behind until, quite suddenly, Hook knew they were doomed.
He and his men had breasted a small rise and in front of them was a wide grassy valley, its far side rising gently to the horizon where there was a church tower and a spread of woods. The valley was pastureland, empty of life now, but scarred across the valley floor was the evidence of their approaching doom.
Hook curbed Raker and stared.
Because right across his front, stretching from east to west, was a smear of mud, a great wide scar of churned land where every blade of grass had vanished. Water glinted from the myriad holes left by the hooves of horses. The ground was a mess, churned and rutted and broken and pitted, because an army had marched through the valley.
It must have been a great army, Hook thought. Thousands of horses had left the tracks that were newly made. He rode to the edge of the scar and saw the clarity of the hoofprints so distinctly that in places he could see the marks left by the horseshoe nails. He stared westward, to where that vanished army had gone, but he saw nothing, only the path by which the thousands of men had traveled. The scarred earth turned north at the valley’s end.
“Sweet Jesus,” Tom Scarlet said in awe, “there must be thousands of the bastards.”
“Ride back,” Hook told Peter Scoyle, “find Sir John, tell him about this.”
“Tell him about what?” Scoyle asked.
Hook remembered Scoyle was a Londoner. “What do you think that is?” He pointed at the scarred earth.
“A muddy mess,” Scoyle said.
“Tell Sir John the enemy was here within the last day.”
“They were?”
“Go!” Hook said impatiently, then turned back to stare at the myriad hoofprints. There were thousands upon thousands, so many they had trampled the valley into a quagmire. He had seen the drovers’ roads in England after the vast herds of cattle had been driven down to their slaughter in London, and as a boy he had been amazed by the size of the herds, but these tracks were far greater than any left by those doomed animals. Every man in France, he thought, and maybe every man in Burgundy, had ridden across this valley, and they had passed within the last day. So somewhere to the west or north, somewhere between this place and Calais, that great host waited.
“They have to be watching us,” he said.
“Sweet Jesus,” Tom Scarlet said again, and made the sign of the cross. Both archers looked at the farther woods, but no glint of reflected sunlight betrayed a man in armor. Yet Hook was sure the enemy must have scouts who were shadowing England’s tired army.
Sir John arrived with a dozen men-at-arms. He said nothing as he stared at the tracks and then, as Hook had done, he looked westward and then northward. “So they’re here,” he finally said, sounding resigned.
“That’s not the small army that was following us along the river,” Hook said.
“Of course it goddam well isn’t,” Sir John said, looking at the rutted fields. “That’s the might of France, Hook,” he said sarcastically.
“And they must be watching us, Sir John,” Hook said.
“You need a shave, Hook,” Sir John said harshly. “You look like a goddamned vagabond.”
“Yes, Sir John.”
“And of course the cabbage-shitting farts are watching us. So fly the banners! And damn them! Damn them, damn them, damn them!” He shouted the mild curses, startling Lucifer who flicked back his ears. “Damn them and keep going!” Sir John said.
Because there was no choice. And next day, though there was still no sign of the enemy army, there came proof that the French knew exactly where the English were because three heralds waited on the road. They were in their bright liveries, carrying the long white wands of their office, and Hook greeted them politely and sent for Sir John again, and Sir John took the three heralds to the king.
“What did those fancy bastards want?” Will of the Dale asked.
“They wanted to invite us all to breakfast,” Hook said. “Bacon, bread, fried goose liver, pease pudding, good ale.”
Will grinned. “I’d strangle my own mother for a bowl of beans now, just plain beans.”
“Beans, bread, and bacon,” Hook said wistfully.
“Roast ox,” Will said, “with juices dripping.”
“Just a lump of bread would do,” Hook said. He knew the three Frenchmen would learn much from their visit. Heralds were supposed to be above faction, mere observers and messengers, but the three men would surely tell the French commanders of the English troops scurrying off the road to lower their breeches and void their bowels, of the sagging horses, of the bedraggled, silent army that traveled north and west so slowly.
“They challenged us to battle,” Father Christopher said after the heralds had left. The chaplain, inevitably, knew what had happened when the three French emissaries met the king. “It was all exceedingly polite,” he told Hook and his archers, “everyone bowed very prettily, exchanged charming compliments, agreed the weather was most inclement, and then our guests issued their challenge.”
“Nice of them,” Hook said sarcastically.
“The niceties are important,” the priest said chidingly, “you don’t dance with a woman without asking her first, not in polite society, so now the Constable of France and the Duke of Bourbon and the Duke of Orleans are inviting us to dance.”
“Who are they?” Tom Scarlet asked.
“The constable is Charles d’Albret, and pray he doesn’t dance face to face with you, Tom, and the dukes are great men. The Duke of Bourbon is an old friend of yours, Hook.”
“Of mine?”
“He led the army that ruined Soissons.”
“Jesus,” Hook said, and again thought of the blind archers bleeding to death on the cobblestones.
“And each of the dukes,” Father Christopher went on, “probably leads a contingent greater than our whole army.”
“And the king accepted their invitation?” Hook asked.
“Oh willingly!
” Father Christopher said. “He loves to dance, though he declined to name a place for the dance. He said the French would doubtless have no trouble finding us.”
And now, because he knew the French would have no such trouble, and because his army might have to fight at any moment, the king ordered every man to ride in full panoply. They were to wear armor and surcoats, though most armor and jupons were now so stained or rusted and ragged that they would hardly impress an enemy, let alone overawe one. And still no enemy appeared.
No enemy showed on the feast day of Saint Cordula, the British virgin who had been slaughtered by pagans, nor the next day, the feast of Saint Felix who had been beheaded for refusing to yield the holy scriptures in his possession. The army had been marching for more than two weeks, and the next day was the feast of Saint Raphael who Father Christopher said was one of the seven archangels who stand before the throne of God. “And you know what tomorrow is?” Father Christopher asked Hook on Saint Raphael’s Day.
Hook had to think about his answer which, when it came, was uncertain. “Is it a Wednesday?”
“No,” Father Christopher said, smiling, “tomorrow is a Friday.”
“Then I know tomorrow’s Friday,” Hook said, grinning, “and you’ll make us all eat fish, father. Maybe a nice fat trout? Or an eel?”
“Tomorrow,” Father Christopher said gently, “is the feast day of Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian.”
“Oh, dear God,” Hook said, and felt as though cold water had suddenly washed his heart, though he could not tell whether that was fear or the sudden certitude that such a day presaged a real and beneficial significance.
“And it might be a good day to say your prayers,” the priest suggested.
“I will, father,” Hook promised, and he began praying that very moment. Let us reach your day, he prayed to Saint Crispinian, without seeing the French, and I will know we are safe. Let us escape, he prayed, and take us safe home. Blind the French to our presence, he begged, and he added that prayer to Saint Raphael who was the patron saint of the blind. Just take us safe home, he prayed, and he vowed to Saint Crispinian that he would make a pilgrimage to Soissons if the saint took him home and he would put money into a jar in the cathedral, enough money to pay for the altar frontal that John Wilkinson had torn apart so long ago. Just take us home, he prayed, take us all home and make us safe.