Agincourt - Cornwell Bernard (читать книги онлайн без сокращений .txt) 📗

“Sir Martin?” Hook asked. “And why in God’s name did he send him?”

“Why do you think?” Snoball answered harshly.

Hook mimed drawing a knife across his throat. “Is that what he hopes?”

“He hopes Sir Martin will minister to our souls,” Snoball said distantly and then, perhaps thinking he had betrayed too much, walked some distance down the wharf.

Hook watched the Holy Ghost creep closer. “Are we expecting any new men?” he asked.

“None that I know of, Sir John hasn’t said anything.”

“He’s not happy,” Hook said.

“Because he’s crazy, moon-touched. Daft as a hare.” Thomas Evelgold brooded for a moment. “He wants to march into France! Man’s daft! He wants us all dead! But it’s all right for him, isn’t it?”

“All right?”

“He won’t be killed, will he? What happens if we march into France to find a battle? The gentry don’t get killed, Hook, they get taken prisoner! But no one will ransom you and me. We get slaughtered, Hook, while their lordships go off to some comfortable castle and get fed and given whores. Sir John don’t care. He just wants a fight! But he knows he’ll like as not live through a battle. He should give a thought to us.” Evelgold drained his ale. “Still, won’t happen. We’ll all be home by Saint Martin’s feast day.”

“The king wants to march,” Hook said.

“The king can count as well as you and me,” Evelgold said dismissively, “and he won’t march.”

Lines were hurled from the Holy Ghost to be caught by men ashore, and slowly, laboriously, the great ship was hauled in to the quay. Gangplanks were lowered and then the newcomers, looking unnaturally clean, were chivvied ashore. There were around sixty archers, all carrying cased bows, arrow bags, and bundles. The red crosses of Saint George on their jupons looked very bright. A priest came down the nearer gangplank, fell to his knees on the wharf, and made the sign of the cross. Behind him were four archers wearing the Slayton moon and stars and one of them had springy gold hair sticking wildly from beneath his helmet’s brim. For a heartbeat Hook did not believe what he saw, then he stood and shouted. “Michael! Michael!”

It was his younger brother. Michael saw him and grinned. “My brother,” Hook explained to Evelgold, then strode to meet Michael. They embraced. “My God, it is you,” Hook said.

William Snoball called Michael’s name, but Hook turned on the steward. “He’ll come when he’s ready, Master Snoball. Where are you quartered?”

Snoball grudgingly told him and Hook promised to bring his brother, then took Michael to the table and poured a pot of ale. Thomas Evelgold left them alone. “What in God’s name are you doing here?” Hook demanded.

“Lord Slayton sent his last archers,” Michael said, grinning, “he reckoned you all needed help. I didn’t even know you were here!”

Then there was a catching up of news. Hook said that Robert Perrill had been killed in the siege, though he did not say how, and Michael told how their grandmother had died, a fact that did not trouble Hook in the least. “She was a bitter old bitch,” he said.

“She looked after us, though,” Michael said.

“She looked after you, not me.”

Then Melisande came from the tavern and she was introduced, and Hook felt a sudden, wild and unfamiliar happiness. The two people he loved most were with him, and he had money in his pockets, and all seemed well with the world. The campaign in France might be over, and over before it had gained any great victory, but he was still happy. “I’ll ask Sir John if you can join us,” he told Michael.

“I don’t think Lord Slayton will allow that,” Michael said.

“Aye, well, we can only ask.”

“So what’s going to happen here?” Michael wanted to know.

“I reckon some poor bastards will be left here to defend this town,” Hook said, “and the rest of us will go home.”

“Go home?” Michael frowned. “But we just got here!”

“That’s what folk are saying. The lords are trying to make the decision now, but it’s too late in the year to go marching inland and, besides, the French army’s too big. We’ll be going home.”

“I hope not,” Michael said. He grinned. “I didn’t come this far to go home again. I want to fight.”

“No, you don’t,” Hook said, and surprised himself by saying it. Melisande was also surprised, looking at him curiously.

“I don’t?”

“It’s blood,” Hook said, “and men crying for their mothers, and too much screaming, and pain and bastards in metal trying to kill you.”

Michael was taken aback. “They say we just shoot arrows at them,” he said falteringly.

“Aye, you do, but in the end, brother, you have to get close. Close enough to see their eyes. Close enough to kill them.”

“And Nicholas is good at that,” Melisande said flatly.

“Not every man is,” Hook said, suspecting that Michael, with his generous and trusting nature, lacked the ruthlessness to get close and commit slaughter.

“Maybe just one battle,” Michael said wistfully, “not a very big one.”

Hook took Michael through the town at sundown. Lord Slayton’s men had found houses close to the Montivilliers Gate and Hook led his brother there and so into the yard of a merchant’s house where the archers were quartered. His old companions went silent as the Hook brothers appeared. There was no sign of Sir Martin, but Tom Perrill, dark and brooding, was sitting against a wall, and he stared expressionless at the two Hooks. William Snoball sensed trouble and stood up.

“Michael’s joining you,” Hook announced loudly, “and Sir John Cornewaille wants you to know that my brother is under his protection.” Sir John had said no such thing, but none of Lord Slayton’s men would know that.

Tom Perrill gave a mocking laugh, but said nothing. William Snoball confronted Hook. “There’ll be no trouble,” he agreed.

“There will indeed be no trouble!” A voice echoed the statement and Hook turned to see Sir Edward Derwent, Lord Slayton’s captain who had been captured in the mine, standing in the courtyard entrance. Sir Edward had been freed when the town surrendered, and Hook reckoned he must have been at the council of war because he was dressed in his finest clothes. Sir Edward now strode to the courtyard’s center. “There will be no trouble!” he said again. “None of you will fight each other, because your job is to fight the French!”

“I thought we were going home,” Snoball said, puzzled.

“Well, you’re not,” Sir Edward said. “The king wants more, and what the king wants, he gets.”

“We’re staying here?” Hook asked, incredulous. “In Harfleur?”

“No, Hook,” Sir Edward said, “we’re marching.” He sounded grim, as though he disapproved of the decision. But Henry was king and, as Sir Edward had said, what the king wanted the king got.

And what Henry wanted was more war.

And so the army would march into France.