Azincourt. Bernard Cornwell

the nunnery in Soissons as a novice and to be a kitchen maid to the nuns. ‘That is how lords hide their sins,’ Father Michel explained bitterly, ‘by putting their bastards in prison.’

      ‘Prison?’

      ‘She did not want to be a nun. You know what her name is?’

      ‘Melisande.’

      ‘Melisande was a Queen of Jerusalem,’ Père Michel said, smiling. ‘And this Melisande loves you.’ Hook said nothing to that. ‘Take care of her,’ Père Michel said sternly on the day they left.

      They went in disguise. It was difficult to hide Hook’s stature, but Father Michel gave him a white penitent’s robe and a leper’s clapper, which was a piece of wood to which two others were attached by leather strips, and Melisande, also in a penitent’s robe and with her black hair chopped raggedly short, led him north and west. They were pilgrims, it appeared, seeking a cure for Hook’s disease. They lived off alms tossed by folk who did not want to go near Hook, who announced his contagious presence by rattling the clapper loudly. They still moved circumspectly, skirting the larger villages and making a wide detour to avoid the smear of smoke that marked the city of Amiens. They slept in the woods, or in cattle byres, or in haystacks, and the rain soaked them and the sun warmed them and one day, beside the River Canche, they became lovers. Melisande was silent afterwards, but she clung to Hook and he said a prayer of thanks to Saint Crispinian, who ignored him.

      The next day they walked north, following a road that led across a wide field between two woods, and off to the west was a small castle half hidden by a stand of trees. They rested in the eastern woods close to a tumbledown forester’s cottage with a moss-thick thatch. Barley grew in the wide field, the ears rippling prettily under the breeze. Larks tumbled above them, their song another ripple, and both Hook and Melisande dozed in the late summer’s warmth.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ a harsh voice demanded. A horseman, dressed richly and with a hooded hawk on his wrist, was watching them from the wood’s edge.

      Melisande knelt in submission and lowered her head. ‘I take my brother to Saint-Omer, lord,’ she said.

      The horseman, who may or may not have been a lord, took note of Hook’s clapper and edged his horse away. ‘What do you seek there?’ he demanded.

      ‘The blessing of Saint Audomar, lord,’ Melisande said. Father Michel had told them Saint-Omer was near Calais, and that many folk sought cures from Saint Audomar’s shrine in the town. Father Michel had also said it was much safer to say they were travelling to Saint-Omer than to admit they were headed for the English enclave around Calais.

      ‘God give you a safe journey,’ the horseman said grudgingly and tossed a coin into the leaf mould.

      ‘Lord?’ Melisande asked.

      The rider turned his horse back. ‘Yes?’

      ‘Where are we, lord? And how far to Saint-Omer?’

      ‘A very long day’s walk,’ the man said, gathering his reins, ‘and why would you care what this place is called? You won’t have heard of it.’

      ‘No, lord,’ Melisande said.

      The man gazed at her for a heartbeat, then shrugged. ‘That castle?’ he said, nodding to the battlements showing above the western trees, ‘is called Azincourt. I hope your brother is cured.’ He gathered his reins and spurred his horse into the barley.

      It was four more days before they reached the marshes about Calais. They moved cautiously, avoiding the French patrols that circled the English-held town. It was night when they reached the Nieulay bridge that led onto the causeway that approached the town. Sentries challenged them. ‘I’m English!’ Hook shouted and then, holding Melisande’s hand, stepped cautiously into the flare of torchlight illuminating the bridge’s gate.

      ‘Where are you from, lad?’ a grey-bearded man in a close-fitting helmet asked.

      ‘We’ve come from Soissons,’ Hook said.

      ‘You’ve come from …’ the man took a step forward to peer at Hook and his companion. ‘Sweet Jesus Christ. Come on through.’

      So Hook stepped through the small gate built into the larger one, and thus he and Melisande crossed into England where he was an outlaw.

      But Saint Crispinian had kept his word and Hook had come home.

      Even in summer the hall of Calais Castle was chilly. The thick stone walls kept the warmth at bay and so a great fire crackled in the hearth, and in front of the stone fireplace was a wide rug on which two couches stood and six hounds slept. The rest of the room was stone-flagged. Swords were racked along one wall, and iron-tipped 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