Azincourt. Bernard Cornwell

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      ‘Now go. Tell Snoball to come in. Go.’

      Hook went.

      It was a January day. It was still cold. The sky was low and twilight dark, though it was only mid-morning. At dawn there had been flurries of snow, but it had not settled. There was frost on the thatched roofs and skins of cat ice on the few puddles that had not been trampled into mud. Nick Hook, long-legged and broad-chested and dark-haired and scowling, sat outside the tavern with seven companions, including his brother and the two Perrill brothers. Hook wore knee-high boots with spurs, two pairs of breeches to keep out the cold, a woollen shirt, a padded leather jerkin and a short linen tunic, which was blazoned with Lord Slayton’s golden crescent moon and three golden stars. All eight men wore leather belts with pouches, long daggers and swords, and all wore the same livery, though a stranger would need to look hard to discern the moon and stars because the colours had faded and the tunics were dirty.

      No one did look hard, because armed men in livery meant trouble. And these eight men were archers. They carried neither bows nor arrow bags, but the breadth of their chests showed these were men who could draw the cord of a war bow a full yard back and make it look easy. They were bowmen, and they were one cause of the fear that pervaded London’s streets. The fear was as pungent as the stench of sewage, as prevalent as the smell of woodsmoke. House doors were closed. Even the beggars had vanished, and the few folk who walked the city were among those who had provoked the fear, yet even they chose to pass on the farther side of the street from the eight archers.

      ‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ Nick Hook broke the silence.

      ‘Go to church if you want to say prayers, you bastard,’ Tom Perrill said.

      ‘I’ll shit in your mother’s face first,’ Hook snarled.

      ‘Quiet, you two,’ William Snoball intervened.

      ‘We shouldn’t be here,’ Hook growled. ‘London’s not our place!’

      ‘Well, you are here,’ Snoball said, ‘so stop bleating.’

      The tavern stood on a corner where a narrow street led into a wide market square. The inn’s sign, a carved and painted model of a bull, hung from a massive beam that was anchored in the tavern’s gable and reached out to a stout post sunk in the marketplace. Other archers were visible around the square, men in different liveries, all fetched to London by their lords, though where those lords were no one knew. Two priests carrying bundles of parchments hurried by on the street’s far side. Somewhere deeper in the city a bell started to toll. One of the priests glanced at the archers wearing the moon and stars, then almost tripped as Tom Perrill spat.

      ‘What in Christ’s name are we doing here?’ Robert Perrill asked.

      ‘Christ is not telling us,’ Snoball answered sourly, ‘but I am assured we do His work.’

      Christ’s work consisted of guarding the corner where the street joined the marketplace, and the archers had been ordered to let no man or woman pass them by, either into the market square or out of it. That command did not apply to priests, nor to mounted gentry, but only to the common folk, and those common folk possessed the wisdom to stay indoors. Seven hand-drawn carts had come down the street, pulled by ragged men and loaded with firewood, barrels, stones and long timbers, but the carts had been accompanied by mounted men-at-arms who wore the royal livery and the archers had stayed still and silent while they passed.

      A plump girl with a scarred face brought a jug of ale from the tavern. She filled the archers’ pots and her face showed nothing as Snoball groped beneath her heavy skirts. She waited till he had finished, then held out a hand.

      ‘No, no, darling,’ Snoball said, ‘I did you a favour so you should reward me.’ The girl turned and went indoors. Michael, Hook’s younger brother, stared at the table and Tom Perrill sneered at the young man’s embarrassment, but said nothing. There was little joy to be had in provoking Michael, who was too good-hearted to take offence.

      Hook watched the royal men-at-arms who had stopped the handcarts in the centre of the marketplace where two long stakes were stood upright in two big barrels. The stakes were being fixed in place by packing the barrels with stones and gravel. A man-at-arms tested one of the stakes, trying to tip or dislodge it, but the work had evidently been well done, for he could not shift the tall timber. He jumped down and the labourers began stacking bundles of firewood around the twin barrels.

      ‘Royal firewood,’ Snoball said, ‘burns brighter.’

      ‘Does it really?’ Michael Hook asked. He tended to believe everything he was told and waited eagerly for an answer, but the other archers ignored his question.

      ‘At last,’ Tom Perrill said instead, and Hook saw a small crowd emerging from a church at the far side of the marketplace. The crowd was composed of ordinary-looking folk, but it was surrounded by soldiers, monks and priests, and one of those priests now headed towards the tavern called the Bull.

      ‘Here’s Sir Martin,’ Snoball said, as if his companions would not recognise the priest who, as he drew nearer, grinned. Hook felt a tremor of hatred as he saw the eel-thin Sir Martin with his loping stride, lopsided face and his strange, intense eyes that some thought looked beyond this world to the next, though opinion varied whether Sir Martin gazed at hell or heaven. Hook’s grandmother had no doubts. ‘He was bitten by the devil’s dog,’ she liked to say, ‘and if he hadn’t been born gentry he’d have been hanged by now.’

      The archers stood with grudging respect as the priest drew near. ‘God’s work waits on you, boys,’ Sir Martin greeted them. His dark hair was grey at the sides and thin on top. He had not shaved for some days and his long chin was covered in white stubble that reminded Hook of frost. ‘We need a ladder,’ Sir Martin said, ‘and Sir Edward’s bringing the ropes. Nice to see the gentry working, isn’t it? We need a long ladder. There has to be one somewhere.’

      ‘A ladder,’ Will Snoball said, as if he had never heard of such a thing.

      ‘A long one,’ Sir Martin said, ‘long enough to reach that beam.’ He jerked his head at the sign of the bull over their heads. ‘Long, long.’ He said the last words distractedly, as if he were already forgetting what business he was about.

      ‘Look for a ladder,’ Will Snoball told two of the archers, ‘a long one.’

      ‘No short ladders for God’s work,’ Sir Martin said, snapping his attention back to the archers. He rubbed his thin hands together and grimaced at Hook. ‘You look ill, Hook,’ he added happily, as if hoping Nick Hook were dying.

      ‘The ale tastes funny,’ Hook said.

      ‘That’s because it’s Friday,’ the priest said, ‘and you should abstain from ale on Wednesdays and Fridays. Your name-saint, the blessed Nicholas, rejected his mother’s teats on Wednesdays and Fridays, and there’s a lesson in that! There can be no pleasures for you, Hook, on Wednesdays and Fridays. No ale, no joy and no tits, that is your fate for ever. And why, Hook, why?’ Sir Martin paused and his long face twisted in a malevolent grin, ‘Because you have supped on the sagging tits of evil! I will not have mercy on her children, the scriptures say, because their mother hath played the harlot!’

      Tom Perrill sniggered. ‘What are we doing, father?’ Will Snoball asked tiredly.

      ‘God’s work, Master Snoball, God’s holy work. Go to it.’

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