Azincourt. Bernard Cornwell

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СКАЧАТЬ turned away and Hook hissed at her to come with him, but the girl knew what she wanted. She spat at Sir Roger’s corpse, then spat a second time before giving Hook her hand. He pulled her up as easily as he hauled back a bowstring. He gestured at the surcoat and purse and she scooped them up, then followed him along the attic. He pushed through the flimsy wattle screen that divided the roof space and so led her into the neighbouring attic. He trod carefully as the light diminished. He went to the very end, three houses down from where he had killed Sir Roger, and he gestured at the girl again, motioning her to crouch by the gable wall, and then, working slowly so as to make as little noise as possible, he pulled down the roof thatch.

      It took maybe an hour. He not only dragged down the thatch, but forced some pegged rafters off the ridge timber, and when he had finished he reckoned it looked as though the roof had collapsed and he and the girl crept under the straw and timbers and huddled there. He had made a hiding place.

      And all he could do was wait. The girl sometimes spoke, but Hook had learned little French during his stay in Soissons and he did not understand what she said. He hushed her, and after a while she leaned against him and fell asleep, though sometimes she would whimper and Hook awkwardly tried to soothe her. She was wearing Sir Roger’s surcoat, still damp with his blood. Hook untied the purse’s strings and saw coins, gold and silver; the price, he suspected, of betrayal.

      Dawn was smoky grey. Sir Roger’s gutted corpse was found before the sun came up and there was a great hue and cry and Hook heard the men ransacking the row of houses beneath him, but his hiding place was cunningly made and no one thought to look in the tangle of straw and timber. The girl woke then and Hook laid a finger on her lips and she shivered as she clung to him. Hook’s fear was still there, but it had settled into a resignation, and somehow the company of the girl gave him a hope that had not been in his soul the night before. Or perhaps, he thought, the twin saints of Soissons were protecting him and he made the sign of the cross and sent a prayer of gratitude to Crispin and Crispinian. They were silent now, but he had done what they had told him to do, and then he wondered if it had been Crispinian who had spoken to him in London. That seemed unlikely, but who had it been? God? Yet that question was unimportant against his realisation that he had done what he had failed to do in London and so hope flickered inside him. Hope of redemption and survival. It was a feeble hope, small as a candle’s flame in a high wind, but it was there.

      The city had become quieter as the dawn approached, but as the sun rose over the cathedral the noise began again. There were screams and moans and cries. There was a gap in the ragged collapsed thatch and Hook could see down into the small square in front of the church of Saint Antoine-le-Petit. The two girls who had been tied to the barrels were gone, though the crossbowmen and men-at-arms were still there. A brindled dog sniffed at the corpse of a nun who lay with her head in a pool of black blood and with her habit pulled up above her waist. A man-at-arms rode through the square, a naked girl draped belly down across the saddle in front of him. He slapped her rump two-handed, as though he played a drum, and the watching men laughed.

      Hook waited. He needed to piss badly, but dared not move, so he wet his breeches and the girl smelt it and grimaced, but had to pee herself a moment later. She began to cry softly and Hook held her close until her tears stopped. She murmured to him, and he murmured back, and neither understood the other, but both were comforted.

      Then the sound of more hooves made Hook twist around to peer through a gap in the straw. He could see down into the square where a score or more of horsemen had arrived in front of the church. One man carried a banner of golden lilies on a blue field, the whole surrounded by a red border blazoned with white dots. The horsemen were in armour, though none wore a helmet, and they were followed by armoured men-at-arms who came on foot.

      One of the newly arrived riders wore a surcoat that showed three hawks on a green field and Hook realised the horseman must be an Englishman who had been in Sir Roger’s service, and it was that man who spurred his horse to the church and, leaning from the saddle, pounded a shortened lance against the door. He shouted something, though Hook was too far away to hear, but it must have been words of reassurance because, a moment later, the church door opened and Sergeant Smithson peered out.

      The two men talked, then Smithson went back into the church, and there was a long pause. Hook watched, wondering what was happening, then the church door swung open again and the English archers filed warily into the sunlight. It seemed that Sir Roger had kept his word and Hook, watching from the ravaged gable, wondered if there was any chance of joining the bowmen who now gathered in front of the Englishman’s horse. Sir Roger must have agreed that the archers would be spared, for the French appeared to be welcoming them. Smithson’s men piled their bows, arrow bags and swords by the church door and then, one by one, knelt to a horseman whose stallion was gaudy with the golden lilies on their blue cloth. The rider wore a gold coronet and bright polished armour and he raised a hand in what appeared to be a kindly benediction. Only John Wilkinson hung back close to the church.

      If I can reach the street, Hook thought, then I can run to join my countrymen. ‘No,’ Saint Crispinian whispered in Hook’s head, startling him. The girl was clutching him.

      ‘No?’ Hook whispered aloud.

      ‘No,’ Saint Crispinian said again, very firmly.

      The girl asked Hook something and he hushed her. ‘Wasn’t talking to you, lass,’ he whispered.

      The blue and gold horseman held his mailed fist high for a few heartbeats, then abruptly dropped his hand.

      And the massacre began.

      The dismounted men-at-arms drew swords and attacked the kneeling archers. The first of the bowmen died swiftly because they were unprepared, but others had time to draw their short knives and fight back, but the Frenchmen were in plate armour and they carried the longer blades and they came at the archers from every side. Sir Roger’s man-at-arms watched. John Wilkinson snatched up a sword from the pile by the church door, but a man-at-arms ran him through with a shortened lance, and a second Frenchman cut down through his neck so that Wilkinson’s blood sprayed high on the door’s stone archway, which was carved with angels and fishes. Some archers were taken alive, bludgeoned back to the ground and guarded there by the grinning men-at-arms.

      The man in the golden coronet turned and rode away, followed by his standard-bearer, his squire, his page and his mounted followers. The Englishman wearing the badge of the three hawks rode with them, turning his back on the surviving archers who called out for mercy. But there was no mercy.

      The French had long memories of defeat and they hated the men who drew the long war bow. At Crécy the French had outnumbered the English and had trapped them, and the French had charged across the low valley to rid the world of the impudent invaders, and it had been the archers who had defeated them by filling the sky with goose-fledged death and so cut down noble knights with their long-nosed arrows. Then, at Poitiers, the archers had ripped apart the chivalry of France and at that day’s end the King of France was a prisoner, and all those insults still rankled, and so there was no mercy.

      Hook and the girl listened. There were thirty or forty archers still alive and the French first chopped two fingers from each man’s right hand so they could never again draw a bow. A big-bellied, wide-grinned Frenchman took the fingers with a mallet and chisel, and some of the archers took the agony in silence, while others had to be dragged protesting to the barrel on which their hands were spread. Hook thought the revenge would end there, but it had only begun. The French wanted more than fingers, they wanted pain and death.

      A tall man, mounted on a high horse, watched the archers’ deaths. The man had long black hair that fell below his armoured shoulders and Hook, who had the eyesight of a hawk, could clearly see the man’s handsome, sun-darkened face. He had a sword-blade of a nose, a wide mouth and a long jaw shadowed by stubble. Over his armour he wore СКАЧАТЬ