Azincourt. Bernard Cornwell

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СКАЧАТЬ lances rested on trestles. Sparrows flitted among the beams. The shutters at the western end of the hall were open and Hook could hear the endless stirring of the sea.

      The garrison commander and his elegant lady sat on one couch. Hook had been told their names, but the words had slithered through his head and so he did not know who they were. Six men-at-arms stood behind the couch, all watching Hook and Melisande with sceptical and hostile eyes, while a priest stood at the rug’s edge, looking down at the two fugitives who knelt on the stone flags. ‘I do not understand,’ the priest said in a nasally unpleasant voice, ‘why you left Lord Slayton’s service.’

      ‘Because I refused to kill a girl, father,’ Hook explained.

      ‘And Lord Slayton wished her dead?’

      ‘His priest did, sir.’

      ‘Sir Giles Fallowby’s son,’ the man on the couch put in, and his voice suggested he did not like Sir Martin.

      ‘So a man of God wished her dead,’ the priest ignored the garrison commander’s tone, ‘yet you knew better?’ His voice was dangerous with menace.

      ‘She was only a girl,’ Hook said.

      ‘It was through woman,’ the priest pounced fiercely on Hook’s answer, ‘that sin entered the world.’

      The elegant lady put a long pale hand over her mouth as if to hide a yawn. There was a tiny dog on her lap, a little bundle of white fur studded with pugnacious eyes, and she stroked its head. ‘I am bored,’ she said, speaking to no one in particular.

      There was a long silence. One of the hounds whimpered in its sleep and the garrison commander leaned forward to pat its head. He was a heavy-set, black-bearded man who now gestured impatiently towards Hook. ‘Ask him about Soissons, father,’ he ordered.

      ‘I was coming to that, Sir William,’ the priest said.

      ‘Then come to it quickly,’ the woman said coldly.

      ‘Are you outlawed?’ the priest asked instead and, when the archer did not answer, he repeated the question more loudly and still Hook did not answer.

      ‘Answer him,’ Sir William growled.

      ‘I would have thought his silence was eloquence itself,’ the lady said. ‘Ask him about Soissons.’

      The priest grimaced at her commanding tone, but obeyed. ‘Tell us what happened in Soissons,’ he demanded, and Hook told the tale again, how the French had entered the town by the southern gate and how they had raped and killed, and how Sir Roger Pallaire had betrayed the English archers.

      ‘And you alone escaped?’ the priest asked sourly.

      ‘Saint Crispinian helped me,’ Hook said.

      ‘Oh! Saint Crispinian did?’ the priest asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘How very obliging of him.’ There was a snort of half-suppressed laughter from one of the men-at-arms, while the others just stared with distaste at the kneeling archer. Disbelief hung in the castle’s great hall like the woodsmoke that leaked around the wide hearth’s opening. Another of the men-at-arms was staring fixedly at Melisande and now leaned close to his neighbour and whispered something that made the other man laugh. ‘Or did the French let you go?’ the priest demanded sharply.

      ‘No, sir!’ Hook said.

      ‘Perhaps they let you go for a reason!’

      ‘No!’

      ‘Even a humble archer can count men,’ the priest said, ‘and if our lord the king collects an army, then the French will wish to know numbers.’

      ‘No, sir!’ Hook said again.

      ‘So they let you go, and bribed you with a whore?’ the priest suggested.

      ‘She’s no whore!’ Hook protested and the men-at-arms sniggered.

      Melisande had not yet spoken. She had seemed overawed by the big men in their mail coats and by the supercilious priest and by the languorous woman who sprawled on the cushioned couch, but now Melisande found her tongue. She might not have understood the priest’s insult, but she recognised his tone, and she suddenly straightened her back and spoke fast and defiantly. She spoke French, and spoke it so quickly that Hook did not understand one word in a hundred, but everyone else in the room spoke the language and they all listened. She spoke passionately, indignantly, and neither the garrison commander nor the priest interrupted her. Hook knew she was telling the tale of Soissons’s fall, and after a while tears came to her eyes and rolled down her cheeks and her voice rose as she hammered the priest with her story. She ran out of words, gestured at Hook and her head dropped as she began to sob.

      There was silence for a few heartbeats. A sergeant in a mail coat noisily opened the hall door, saw that the room was occupied, and left just as loudly. Sir William looked judiciously at Hook. ‘You murdered Sir Roger Pallaire?’ he asked harshly.

      ‘I killed him, sir.’

      ‘A good deed from an outlaw,’ Sir William’s wife said firmly, ‘if what the girl says is true.’

      ‘If,’ the priest said.

      ‘I believe her,’ the woman said, then rose from the couch, tucked the little dog into one arm and walked to the rug’s edge where she stooped and raised Melisande by the elbow. She spoke to her in soft French, then led her towards the hall’s far end and so through a curtained opening.

      Sir William waited till his wife was gone, then stood. ‘I believe he’s telling the truth, father,’ he said firmly.

      ‘He might be,’ the priest conceded.

      ‘I believe he is,’ Sir William insisted.

      ‘We could put him to the test?’ the priest suggested with scarcely concealed eagerness.

      ‘You would torture him?’ Sir William asked, shocked.

      ‘The truth is sacred, my lord,’ the priest said, bowing slightly. ‘Et cognoscetis veritatem,’ he declaimed, ‘et veritas liberabit vos!’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘You will know the truth, my lord,’ he translated, ‘and the truth will set you free.’

      ‘I am free,’ the black-bearded man snarled, ‘and it is not our duty to rack the truth out of some poor archer. We shall leave that to others.’

      ‘Of course, my lord,’ the priest said, barely hiding his disappointment.

      ‘Then you know where he must go.’

      ‘Indeed, my lord.’

      ‘So arrange it,’ Sir William said before crossing to Hook and indicating that the archer should stand. ‘Did you kill any of them?’ he demanded.

      ‘A lot, my lord,’ Hook said, remembering the arrows flying into the half-lit breach.

      ‘Good,’ Sir William said implacably, ‘but you also killed Sir Roger Pallaire. That makes you either a hero or a murderer.’

      ‘I’m an archer,’ СКАЧАТЬ