Azincourt. Bernard Cornwell

managed to cut Hook’s lips and start blood from Hook’s nose, but little else. His eyes were wide open, full of anger and indignation, but Hook thought he saw the devil-madness deep inside them. ‘Hook hit me,’ Sir Martin explained, ‘and he’s to be killed.’

      Sir Edward looked from the snarling priest to the bloodied archer. ‘That’s for Lord Slayton to decide,’ Sir Edward said.

      ‘Then he’ll decide to hang him, won’t he?’ Sir Martin snapped.

      ‘Did you hit Sir Martin?’ Sir Edward asked Hook.

      Hook just nodded. Was it God who had spoken to him in the stable, he wondered, or the devil?

      ‘He hit me,’ Sir Martin said and then, with a sudden spasm, he ripped Hook’s jupon clean down its centre, parting the moon from the stars. ‘He’s not worthy of that badge,’ the priest said, throwing the torn surcoat into the mud. ‘Find some rope,’ he ordered Robert Perrill, ‘rope or bowcord, then tie his hands! And take his sword!’

      ‘I’ll take it,’ Sir Edward said. He pulled Hook’s sword that belonged to Lord Slayton from its scabbard. ‘Give him to me, Perrill,’ he ordered, then drew Hook into the yard’s gateway. ‘What happened?’

      ‘He was going to rape the girl, Sir Edward,’ Hook said, ‘he did rape her!’

      ‘Well of course he raped her,’ Sir Edward said impatiently, ‘it’s what the reverend Sir Martin does.’

      ‘And God spoke to me,’ Hook blurted out.

      ‘He what?’ Sir Edward stared at Hook as if the archer had just claimed that the sky had turned to buttermilk.

      ‘God spoke to me,’ Hook said miserably. He did not sound at all convincing.

      Sir Edward said nothing. He stared at Hook a brief while longer, then turned to gaze at the marketplace where the burning man had stopped screaming. Instead he hung from the stake and his hair flared sudden and bright. The ropes that held him burned through and the body collapsed in a gout of flame. Two men-at-arms used pitchforks to thrust the sizzling corpse back into the heart of the fire.

      ‘I heard a voice,’ Hook said stubbornly.

      Sir Edward nodded dismissively, as though acknowledging he had heard Hook’s words, but wanted to hear no more. ‘Where’s your bow?’ he asked suddenly, still looking at the burning figure in the smoke.

      ‘In the tavern taproom, Sir Edward, with the others.’

      Sir Edward turned to the inn yard’s gate where Tom Perrill, grinning and with one hand stained with blood, had just appeared. ‘I’m sending you to the taproom,’ Sir Edward said quietly, ‘and you’ll wait there. You’ll wait there so we can tie your wrists and take you home and arraign you in the manor court and then hang you from the oak outside the smithy.’

      ‘Yes, Sir Edward,’ Hook said in sullen obedience.

      ‘What you will not do,’ Sir Edward said, still in a soft voice, but more forcefully, ‘is walk out of the tavern’s front door. You will not walk into the heart of the city, Hook, and you will not find a street called Cheapside or look for an inn called the Two Cranes. And you will not go into the Two Cranes and enquire after a man called Henry of Calais. Are you listening to me, Hook?’

      ‘Yes, Sir Edward.’

      ‘Henry of Calais is recruiting archers,’ Sir Edward said. A man in royal livery was carrying a burning log towards the second pyre where the other Lollard leader was tied to the tall stake. ‘They need archers in Picardy,’ Sir Edward said, ‘and they pay good money.’

      ‘Picardy,’ Hook repeated the name dully. He thought it must be a town somewhere else in England.

      ‘Earn yourself some money in Picardy, Hook,’ Sir Edward said, ‘because God knows you’ll need it.’

      Hook hesitated. ‘I’m an outlaw?’ he asked nervously.

      ‘You’re a dead man, Hook,’ Sir Edward said, ‘and dead men are outside the law. You’re a dead man because my orders are that you’re to wait in the tavern and then be taken back to the judgment of the manor court, and Lord Slayton will have no choice but to hang you. So go and do what I just said.’

      But before Hook could obey there was a shout from the next corner. ‘Hats off!’ men called abruptly, ‘hats off!’ The shout and a clatter of hooves announced the arrival of a score of horsemen who swept into the wide square where their horses fanned out, pranced, and then stood with breath smoking from their nostrils, and hooves pawing the mud. Men and women were clawing off their hats and kneeling in the mud.

      ‘Down, boy,’ Sir Edward said to Hook.

      The leading horseman was young, not much older than Hook, but his long-nosed face showed a serene certainty as he swept his cold gaze across the marketplace. His face was narrow, his eyes were dark and his mouth thin-lipped and grim. He was clean-shaven, and the razor seemed to have abraded his skin so that it looked raw-scraped. He rode a black horse that was richly bridled with polished leather and glittering silver. He had black boots, black breeches, a black tunic and a fleece-lined cloak of dark purple cloth. His hat was black velvet and sported a black feather, while at his side hung a black-scabbarded sword. He looked all around the marketplace, then urged the horse forward to watch the one woman and three men who now jerked and twisted from the bell ropes hanging from the Bull’s beam. A vagary of wind gusted spark-laden smoke at his stallion, which whinnied and shied away. The rider soothed it by patting its neck with a black-gloved hand, and Hook saw that the man wore jewelled rings over his gloves. ‘They were given a chance to repent?’ the horseman demanded.

      ‘Many chances, sire,’ Sir Martin answered unctuously. The priest had hurried out of the tavern yard and was down on one knee. He made the sign of the cross and his haggard face looked almost saintly, as though he suffered for his Lord God. He could appear that way, his devil-dog-bitten eyes suddenly full of pain and tenderness and compassion.

      ‘Then their deaths,’ the young man said harshly, ‘are pleasing to God and they are pleasing to me. England will be rid of heresy!’ His eyes, brown and intelligent, rested briefly on Nick Hook, who immediately dropped his gaze and stared at the mud until the black-dressed horseman spurred away towards the second fire, which had just been lit. But, in the moment before Hook had looked away, he had seen the scar on the young man’s face. It was a battle scar, showing where an arrow had slashed into the corner between nose and eye. It should have killed, yet God had decreed that the man should live.

      ‘You know who that is, Hook?’ Sir Edward asked quietly.

      Hook did not know for sure, but nor was it hard to guess that he was seeing, for the first time in his life, the Earl of Chester, the Duke of Aquitaine and the Lord of Ireland. He was seeing Henry, by the grace of God, the King of England.

      And, according to all who claimed to understand the tangled webs of royal ancestry, the King of France too.

      The flames reached the second man and he screamed. Henry, the fifth King of England to carry that name, calmly watched the Lollard’s soul go to hell.

      ‘Go, Hook,’ Sir Edward said quietly.

      ‘Why, Sir Edward?’ Hook asked.

      ‘Because Lord Slayton doesn’t want you dead,’ Sir Edward said, ‘and perhaps God did speak to you, and because we all need His grace. Especially today. So just go.’

      And Nicholas Hook, archer and outlaw, went.

       PART ONE

       Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian