Azincourt. Bernard Cornwell

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 a bright surcoat that showed a golden sun from which rays snaked and shot, and on the bright sun was an eagle’s head. The girl did not see the man. She had her face buried in Hook’s arms. She could hear the screams, but she would not watch. She whimpered whenever a man screamed under the exquisite pain that the French exacted as revenge.

      Hook watched. He reckoned the tall man who wore the eagle and the sun could have stopped the torture and murder, but the man did nothing. He sat in his saddle and watched impassively as the French stripped the surviving archers naked, then took their eyes with the points of long knives. The men-at-arms taunted the newly-blinded archers and scoured out their sockets with sharp blades. One Frenchman pretended to eat an eyeball, and the others laughed. The long-haired man did not laugh, he just observed, and his face showed nothing as the blinded men were laid flat on the cobbles to be castrated. Their screams filled the city that was already filled with screaming. It was only when the last blind Englishman had been gelded that the handsome man on the handsome warhorse left the square and the archers were left to bleed to death, sightless under a summer sky. Death took a long time, and Hook shivered even though the air was warm. Saint Crispinian was silent. A naked woman, her breasts cut off and her body red with blood, collapsed amidst the dying archers and wept there until a Frenchman, tired of her tears, casually stove in her skull with a battle-axe. Dogs sniffed the dying.

      The sack of the city continued all day. The cathedral and the parish churches and the nunnery and the priories were all plundered. Women and children were raped and raped again, and their menfolk were murdered and God turned His face away from Soissons. The Sire de Bournonville was executed, and he was fortunate because he died without being tortured first. The castle, supposedly a refuge, had fallen without a fight as the French, permitted into the town by the treachery of Sir Roger, found its gate open and its portcullis raised. The Burgundians died, and only Sir Roger’s men, complicit in their dead leader’s betrayal, had been allowed to live as the city was put to the sword. The citizens had resented their Burgundian garrison and had never abandoned their loyalty to the King of France, but now, in a welter of blood, rape and theft, the French rewarded that loyalty with massacre.

      ‘Je