Azincourt. Bernard Cornwell

      ‘Think she can help you?’ a sour voice interrupted his prayers. Hook turned and saw John Wilkinson.

      ‘If she can’t,’ Hook asked, ‘who can?’

      ‘Her son?’ Wilkinson suggested caustically. The old man looked furtively around him. There were a half-dozen priests saying masses at side altars, but otherwise the only other folk in the cathedral were nuns who were hurrying across the wide nave, shepherded and guarded by priests. ‘Poor girls,’ Wilkinson said.

      ‘Poor?’

      ‘You think they want to be nuns? Their parents put them here to keep them from trouble. They’re bastards of the rich, boy, locked away so they can’t have bastards of their own. Come here, I want to show you something.’ He did not wait for a response, but stumped towards the cathedral’s high altar that reared golden bright beneath the astonishing arches that stood, row above row, in a semicircle at the building’s eastern end. Wilkinson knelt beside the altar and dropped his head reverently. ‘Take a look in the boxes, boy,’ he ordered Hook.

      Hook climbed to the altar where silver and gold boxes stood on either side of a gold crucifix. Most of the boxes had crystal faces and, through those distorting windows, Hook saw scraps of leather. ‘What are they?’ he asked.

      ‘Shoes, boy,’ Wilkinson said, his head still bowed and his voice muffled.

      ‘Shoes?’

      ‘You put them on your feet, young Hook, to keep the mud from getting between your toes.’

      The leather looked old, dark and shrunken. One reliquary held a shrivelled shoe so small that Hook decided it had to be a piece of child’s footwear. ‘Why shoes?’ he asked.

      ‘You’ve heard of Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Patron saints of cobblers, boy, and of leather-workers. They made those shoes, or so we’re told, and they lived here and were probably killed here. Martyred, boy, like that old man you burned in London.’

      ‘He was a …’

      ‘Heretic, I know. You said. But every martyr was killed because someone stronger disagreed with what he believed. Or what she believed. Christ on His cross, boy, Jesus Himself was crucified for heresy! Why the hell else do you think they nailed Him up? Did you kill women too?’

      ‘I didn’t,’ Hook said uncomfortably.

      ‘But there were women?’ Wilkinson asked, looking at Hook. He saw the answer in Hook’s face and grimaced. ‘Oh, I’m sure God was delighted with that day’s work!’ The old man shook his head in disgust before reaching into a purse hanging from his belt. He took out a handful of what Hook presumed were coins and dropped them into the huge copper jar that stood by the altar to receive the tribute of pilgrims. A priest had been watching the two English archers suspiciously, but visibly relaxed when he heard the sound of metal falling onto metal in the big jar. ‘Arrowheads,’ Wilkinson explained with a grin. ‘Old rusted broadheads that are no good any more. Now why don’t you kneel and say a prayer to Crispin and Crispinian?’

      Hook hesitated. God, he was sure, would have seen Wilkinson drop valueless arrowheads into the jar instead of coins, and the threat of hell’s fires suddenly seemed very close and so Hook hurriedly took a coin from his own pouch and dropped it into the copper jar. ‘Good lad,’ Wilkinson said, ‘the bishop will be right glad of that. It’ll pay for a sup of his ale, won’t it?’

      ‘Why pray to Crispin and Crispinian?’ Hook asked Wilkinson.

      ‘Because they’re the local saints, boy. That’s their job, to listen to prayers from Soissons, so they’re the best saints to pray to here.’

      So Hook went to his knees and prayed to Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian that they would beg forgiveness for his sin in London, and he prayed that they would keep him safe in this their town of martyrdom and send him home unscathed to England. The prayer did not feel as powerful as those he had addressed to the mother of Christ, but it made sense, he decided, to pray to the two saints because this was their town and they would surely keep a special watch on those who prayed to them in Soissons.

      ‘I’m done, lad,’ Wilkinson announced briskly. He was pushing something into his pocket and Hook, moving to the altar’s flank, saw that the frontal’s end, where it hung down to the floor, was frayed and ragged because a great square had been crudely cut away. The old man grinned. ‘Silk, lad, silk. I need silk thread for arrows, so I just stole it.’

      ‘From God?’

      ‘If God can’t afford a few threads of silk, boy, then He’s in dire trouble. And you should be glad. You want to kill Frenchmen, young Hook? Pray that I have enough silk thread to tie up your arrows.’

      But Hook had no chance to pray because, next day, under the rising sun, the French came.

      The garrison had known they were coming. News had reached Soissons of the surrender of Compiègne, another town that had been captured by the Burgundians, and Soissons was now the only fortress that barred the French advance into Flanders where the main Burgundian army lay, and the French army was reported to be coming east along the Aisne.

      And then, suddenly, on a bright summer morning, they were there.

      Hook watched their arrival from the western ramparts. Horsemen came first. They wore armour and had bright surcoats, and some galloped close to the town as if daring the bowmen on the walls to shoot. Some crossbowmen loosed bolts, but no horseman or horse was hit. ‘Save your arrows,’ Smithson, the centenar, ordered his English archers. He flicked a careless finger at Hook’s strung bow. ‘Don’t use it, lad,’ he said. ‘Don’t waste an arrow.’ The centenar had come from his tavern, the Goose, and now blinked at the cavorting horsemen, who were shouting inaudibly at the ramparts where men were hanging the Burgundian standard alongside the personal standard of the garrison’s commander, the Sire de Bournonville. Some townsfolk had also come to the walls and they too gazed at the newly arrived horsemen. ‘Look at the bastards,’ Smithson grumbled, gesturing at the townsfolk, ‘they’d like to betray us. We should have killed every last one of them. We should have slit their goddam French throats.’ He spat. ‘Nothing will happen for a day. Might as well drink ale while it’s still available.’ He stumped away, leaving Hook and a half-dozen other English archers on the wall.

      All day the French came. Most were on foot, and those men surrounded Soissons and chopped down trees on the low hills to the south. Tents were erected on the cleared land, and beside the tents were the bright standards of the French nobility, a riot of red, blue, gold and silver flags. Barges came up the river, propelled by giant sweeps, and the barges carried four mangonels, huge machines that could hurl rocks at the city walls. Only one of the massive catapults was brought ashore that day, and Enguerrand de Bournonville, thinking to tip it back into the river, led two hundred mounted men-at-arms on a sally from the western gate, but the French had expected the attack and sent twice as many horsemen to oppose the Burgundians. The two sides reined in, lances upright, and after a while the Burgundians wheeled back, pursued by French jeers. That afternoon smoke began to thicken as the besieging French burned the houses just outside Soissons’s walls. Hook watched the red-headed girl carry a bundle towards the new French encampment. None of the fugitives asked to be admitted to the city, instead they went towards the enemy lines. The girl turned in the thickening smoke to wave farewell to the archers. The first enemy crossbowmen appeared in that smoke, each archer protected by a companion holding a thick pavise, a shield large enough to hide a man as he laboriously re-cranked the crossbow after each bolt was loosed. The heavy bolts thumped into the walls or whistled overhead to fall somewhere in the city.

      Then, as the sun began to sink towards the monstrous catapult on the river’s bank, a trumpet sounded. It called three times, its notes clear and sharp in the smoke-hazed air, and as the last blast faded, so the crossbowmen ceased shooting. There was a sudden surge of sparks as a thatched roof collapsed into a burning house and the smoke whirled thick along the Compiègne road where Hook saw two horsemen appear.