Azincourt. Bernard Cornwell

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.’

      A ladder was found as Sir Edward Derwent crossed the market square with four ropes looped about his broad shoulders. Sir Edward was a man-at-arms and wore the same livery as the archers, though his jupon was cleaner and its colours were brighter. He was a squat, thick-chested man with a face disfigured at the battle of Shrewsbury where a poleaxe had ripped open his helmet, crushed a cheekbone and sliced off an ear. ‘Bell ropes,’ he explained, tossing the heavy coils onto the ground. ‘Need them tied to the beam, and I’m not climbing any ladder.’ Sir Edward commanded Lord Slayton’s men-at-arms and he was as respected as he was feared. ‘Hook, you do it,’ Sir Edward ordered.

      Hook climbed the ladder and tied the bell ropes to the beam. He used the knot with which he would have looped a hempen cord about a bowstave’s nock, though the ropes, being thicker, were much harder to manipulate. When he was done he shinned down the last rope to show that it was tied securely.

      ‘Let’s get this done and over,’ Sir Edward said sourly, ‘and then maybe we can leave this goddamned place. Whose ale is this?’

      ‘Mine, Sir Edward,’ Robert Perrill said.

      ‘Mine now,’ Sir Edward said, and drained the pot. He was dressed in a mail coat over a leather jerkin, all of it covered with the starry jupon. A sword hung at his waist. There was nothing elaborate about the weapon. The blade, Hook knew, was undecorated, the hilt was plain steel, and the handle was two grips of walnut bolted to the tang. The sword was a tool of Sir Edward’s trade, and he had used it to batter down the rebel whose poleaxe had taken half his face.

      The small crowd had been herded by soldiers and priests into the centre of the marketplace where most of them knelt and prayed. There were maybe sixty of them, men and women, young and old. ‘Can’t burn them all,’ Sir Martin said regretfully, ‘so we’re sending most to hell at the rope’s end.’

      ‘If they’re heretics,’ Sir Edward grumbled, ‘they should all be burned.’

      ‘If God wished that,’ Sir Martin said with some asperity, ‘then God would have provided sufficient firewood.’

      More people were appearing now. Fear still pervaded the city, but folk somehow sensed that the greatest moment of danger was over, and so they came to the marketplace and Sir Martin ordered the archers to let them pass. ‘They should see this for themselves,’ the priest explained. There was a sullenness in the gathering crowd, their sympathies plainly aligned with the prisoners and not the guards, though here and there a priest or friar preached an extemporary sermon to justify the day’s events. The doomed, the preachers explained, were enemies of Christ. They were weeds among the righteous wheat. They had been given a chance to repent, but had refused that mercy and so must face their eternal fate.

      ‘Who are they anyway?’ Hook asked.

      ‘Lollards,’ Sir Edward said.

      ‘What’s a Lollard?’

      ‘A heretic, you piece of slime,’ Snoball said happily, ‘and the bastards were supposed to gather here and start a rebellion