Azincourt. Bernard Cornwell

girls among them.

      ‘Doesn’t matter what they look like,’ Snoball said, ‘they’re heretics and they have to die.’

      ‘It’s God’s will,’ Sir Martin snarled.

      ‘But what makes them heretics?’ Hook asked.

      ‘Oh, we are curious today,’ Sir Martin said sourly.

      ‘I’d like to know that too,’ Michael said.

      ‘Because the church says they’re heretics,’ Sir Martin snapped, then appeared to relent of his tone. ‘Do you believe, Michael Hook, that when I raise the host it turns into the most holy and beloved and mystical flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ?’

      ‘Yes, father, of course!’

      ‘Well, they don’t believe that,’ the priest said, jerking his head at the Lollards kneeling in the mud, ‘they believe the bread stays bread, which makes them turds-for-brains piss-shits. And do you believe that our blessed father the Pope is God’s vicar on earth?’

      ‘Yes, father,’ Michael said.

      ‘Thank Christ for that, or else I’d have to burn you.’

      ‘I thought there were two popes?’ Snoball put in.

      Sir Martin ignored that. ‘Ever seen a sinner burn, Michael Hook?’ he asked.

      ‘No, father.’

      Sir Martin grinned lasciviously. ‘They scream, young Hook, like a boar being gelded. They do scream so!’ He turned suddenly and thrust a long bony finger into Nick Hook’s chest. ‘And you should listen to those screams, Nicholas Hook, for they are the liturgy of hell. And you,’ he prodded Hook’s chest again, ‘are hell-bound.’ The priest whirled around, arms suddenly outspread, so that he reminded Hook of a great dark-winged bird. ‘Avoid hell, boys!’ he called enthusiastically, ‘avoid it! No tits on Wednesdays and Fridays, and do God’s work diligently every day!’

      More ropes had been slung from other signposts about the marketplace, and now soldiers roughly divided the prisoners into groups that were pushed towards the makeshift gallows. One man began shouting to his friends, telling them to have faith in God and that they would all meet in heaven before this day was over, and he went on shouting till a soldier in royal livery broke his jaw with a mail-shod fist. The broken-jawed man was one of the two selected for the fires and Hook, standing apart from his comrades, watched as the man was hoisted onto the stone-and gravel-filled barrel and tied to the stake. More firewood was piled around his feet.

      ‘Come on, Hook, don’t dream,’ Snoball grumbled.

      The growing crowd was still sullen. There were a few folk who seemed pleased, but most watched resentfully, ignoring the priests who preached at them and turning their backs on a group of brown-robed monks who chanted a song of praise for the day’s happy events.

      ‘Hoist the old man up,’ Snoball said to Hook. ‘We’ve got ten to kill, so let’s get the work done!’

      One of the empty handcarts that had brought the firewood was parked beneath the beam and Hook was needed to lift a man onto the cart’s bed. The other six prisoners, four men and two women, waited. One of the women clung to her husband, while the second had her back turned and was on her knees, praying. All four prisoners on the cart were men, one of them old enough to be Hook’s grandfather. ‘I forgive you, son,’ the old man said as Hook twisted the thick rope around his neck. ‘You’re an archer, aren’t you?’ the Lollard asked and still Hook did not answer. ‘I was on the hill at Homildon,’ Hook’s victim said, looking up at the grey clouds as Hook tightened the rope, ‘where I shot a bow for my king. I sent shaft after shaft, boy, deep into the Scots. I drew long and I loosed sharp, and God forgive me, but I was good that day.’ He looked into Hook’s eyes. ‘I was an archer.’

      Hook held few things dear beyond his brother and whatever affection he felt for whichever girl was in his arms, yet archers were special. Archers were Hook’s heroes. England, for Hook, was not protected by men in shining armour, mounted on trapper-decked horses, but by archers. By ordinary men who built and ploughed and made, and who could draw the yew war bow and send an arrow two hundred paces to strike a mark the size of a man’s hand. So Hook looked into the old man’s eyes and he saw, not a heretic, but the pride and strength of an archer. He saw himself. He suddenly knew he would like this old man and that realisation checked his hands.

      ‘Nothing you can do about it, boy,’ the man said gently. ‘I fought for the old king and his son wants me dead, so draw the rope tight, boy, draw it tight. And when I’m gone, boy, do something for me.’

      Hook gave the curtest of nods. It could either have been an acknowledgement that he had heard the request, or perhaps it was an agreement to do whatever favour the man might request.

      ‘You see the girl praying?’ the old man asked. ‘She’s my granddaughter. Sarah, she’s called, Sarah. Take her away for me. She doesn’t deserve heaven yet, so take her away. You’re young, boy, you’re strong, you can take her away for me.’

      How? Hook thought, and he savagely pulled the rope’s bitter end so that the loop constricted about the old man’s neck, and then he jumped off the cart and half slipped in the mud. Snoball and Robert Perrill, who had tied the other nooses, were already off the cart.

      ‘Simple folk, they are,’ Sir Martin was saying, ‘just simple folk, but they think they know better than Mother Church, and so a lesson must be taught so that other simple folk don’t follow them into error. Have no pity for them, because it’s God’s mercy we’re administering! God’s unbounded mercy!’

      God’s unbounded mercy was administered by pulling the cart sharply out from under the four men’s feet. They dropped slightly, then jerked and twisted. Hook watched the old man, seeing the broad barrel chest of an archer. The man was choking as his legs drew up, as they trembled and straightened then drew up again, but even in his dying agony he looked with bulging eyes at Hook as though expecting the younger man to snatch his Sarah out of the marketplace. ‘Do we wait for them to die,’ Will Snoball asked Sir Edward, ‘or pull on their ankles?’ Sir Edward seemed not to hear the question. He was distracted again, his eyes unfocused, though he appeared to be staring fixedly at the nearest man tied to the stake. A priest was haranguing the broken-jawed Lollard while a man-at-arms, his face deep shadowed by a helmet, held a flaming torch ready. ‘I’ll let them swing then, sir,’ Snoball said and still got no answer.

      ‘Oh my,’ Sir Martin appeared to wake up suddenly and his voice was reverent, the same tone he used in the parish church when he said the mass, ‘oh my, oh my, oh my. Oh my, just look at that little beauty.’ The priest was gazing at Sarah, who had risen from her knees and was staring with a horrified expression at her grandfather’s struggles. ‘Oh my, God is good,’ the priest said reverently.

      Nicholas Hook had often wondered what angels looked like. There was a painting of angels on the wall of the village church, but it was a clumsy picture because the angels had blobs for faces and their robes and wings had become yellowed and streaked by the damp that seeped through the nave’s plaster, yet nevertheless Hook understood that angels were creatures of unearthly beauty. He thought their wings must be like a heron’s wings, only much larger, and made of feathers that would shine like the sun glowing through the morning mist. He suspected angels had golden hair and long, very clean robes of the whitest linen. He knew they were special creatures, holy beings, but in his dreams they were also beautiful girls that could haunt a boy’s thoughts. They were loveliness on gleaming wings, they were angels.

      And this Lollard girl was as beautiful as Hook’s imagined angels. She had no wings, of course, and her smock was muddied and her face was distorted into a rictus by the horror she watched and by the knowledge that she too must hang, but she was still lovely. She was blue-eyed and fair-haired, had high cheekbones and a skin untouched by the pox. She was a girl to haunt a boy’s dreams, or a priest’s thoughts for that matter. ‘See that gate, Michael Hook?’ Sir Martin asked flatly. The priest had looked for the Perrill brothers to do his bidding, but they were out of earshot