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

“It was, sire, though how it arrived there, I cannot tell.”

“Who discovered it?”

“Sire, me, sire,” Sir Martin, his priest’s robe discolored by clay, stepped out of the crowd. “It was me, sire,” he said, dropping to one knee. “And he’s a good boy, sire, he’s a Christian boy, sire.”

Sir Edward might have protested Michael’s innocence all day and not moved the king to doubt, but a priest’s word carried far more weight. Henry gathered his reins and leaned forward in his saddle. “Are you saying he did not take the pyx?”

“He…” Hook began, and Evelgold hit him so hard in the belly that Hook doubled over.

“The pyx was found in his baggage, sire,” Sir Martin said.

“Then?” the king started, then checked. He looked puzzled. One moment the priest had suggested Michael’s innocence, now he suggested the opposite.

“It is incontrovertible, sire,” Sir Martin said, managing to sound mournful, “that the pyx was among his belongings. It saddens me, sire, it galls my heart.”

“It angers me,” the king shouted, “and it angers God! We risk His displeasure, His wrath, for a copper box! Hang him!”

“Sire!” Michael called, but there was no pity, no appeal, and no hope. The rope was already tied about a branch, the noose was pushed over Michael’s head, and two men hauled on the bitter end to hoist him into the air.

Hook’s brother made a choking noise as he thrashed desperately, his legs jerking and thrusting, and slowly, very slowly the thrashing turned to spasms, to quivers, and the choking noise became short harsh gasps and finally faded to nothing. It took twenty minutes, and the king watched every twitch, and only when he was satisfied that the thief was dead did he take his eyes from the body. He dismounted then and, in front of his army, went on one knee to the astonished country priest. “We beg your forgiveness,” he said loudly and speaking in English, a language the priest did not understand, “and the forgiveness of Almighty God.” He held out the pyx in both hands and the priest, frightened by what he had seen, took it nervously, then a look of astonishment came to his face because the little box was much heavier than it had ever been before. The King of England had filled it with coin.

“Leave the body there!” Henry commanded, getting to his feet. “And march! Let us march!” He took his horse’s reins, put a foot into the stirrup, and swung himself lithely into the saddle. He rode away, followed by his entourage, and Hook moved toward the tree where his brother’s body hung.

“Where the hell are you going?” Sir John asked harshly.

“I’ll bury him,” Hook said.

“You’re a goddamned fool, Hook,” Sir John said, then hit Hook’s face with a mailed hand, “what are you?”

“He didn’t do it!” Hook protested.

Sir John struck him again, much harder, gouging scratches of blood into Hook’s cheek. “It doesn’t matter that he didn’t do it,” he snarled. “God needed a sacrifice, and He got one. Maybe we’ll live because your brother died.”

“He didn’t steal, he’s never stolen, he’s honest!” Hook said.

The gloved hand hammered Hook’s other cheek. “And you do not protest at the decisions of our king,” Sir John said, “and you do not bury him because the king doesn’t want him buried! You are lucky, Hook, not to be hanging beside your brother with piss running down your goddam leg. Now get on your horse and ride.”

“The priest lied!”

“That is your business,” Sir John said, “not mine, and it is certainly not the king’s business. Get on your horse or I’ll have your goddam ears cut off.”

Hook got on his horse. The other archers avoided him, sensing his ill-luck. Only Melisande rode with him.

Sir John’s men were first on the road. Hook, bitter and dazed, was unaware that he was passing Lord Slayton’s men until Melisande hissed, and only then did he notice the archers who had once been his comrades. Thomas Perrill was grinning triumphantly and pointing to his eye, a reminder of his suspicion that Hook had murdered his brother, while Sir Martin stared at Melisande, then glanced at Hook and could not resist a smile when he saw the archer’s tears.

“You will kill them all,” Melisande promised him.

If the French did not do the job for him, Hook thought. They rode on downhill, going now toward the Somme and toward the army’s only hope; an unguarded ford or bridge.

It started to rain again.

TEN

There was not one ford across the Somme, but two, and, better still, neither was guarded. The shadowing French army on the river’s north bank had still not marched the full distance about the great looping curve and the English, arriving at the edge of a vast marsh that bordered the Somme, could see nothing but empty countryside beyond the river.

The first scouts to explore the fords reported that the river was flowing high because of the rain, but not so high as to make the fords impassable, yet to reach the crossings the army had to negotiate two causeways that ran arrow-straight across the wide marsh. Those causeways were over a mile long; twin roads that had been raised above the mire by embankments, and the French had broken both so that at the center of each was a great gap where the causeways had been demolished to leave a morass of treacherous, sucking ground. The scouts had crossed those stretches of bog, but reported that their horses had sunk over their knees, and that none of the army’s wagons could hope to negotiate the terrain. “Then we remake the causeways,” the king ordered.

It took the best part of a day. Much of the army was ordered to dismantle a nearby village so that the beams, rafters, and joists could be used as foundations for the repairs. Bundled thatch, faggots, and earth were then thrown on top of the timbers to make new embankments while the men of the rearguard formed a battle line to protect the work against any surprise attack from the south. There was no such attack. French horsemen watched from a distance, but those enemy riders were few and made no attempt to interfere.

Hook took no part in the work because the vanguard had been ordered to cross the river before any repairs were made. They left their horses behind, walked to the causeway’s gap, and jumped down into the bog where they struggled across to the causeway’s next stretch, which led to the river bank. They waded the Somme, the archers holding bows and arrow bags above their heads. Hook shivered as he went further into the river. He could not swim and he felt tremors of fear as the water crept over his waist and up to his chest, but then, as he pushed against the slow pressure of the current, the riverbed began to rise again. The footing was firm enough, though a few men slipped and one man-at-arms was swept downstream, his cries fading fast as his mail coat dragged him under. Then Hook was wading through reeds and climbing a short muddy bluff to reach the northern bank. The first men were across the Somme.

Sir John ordered his archers to go a half-mile north to where a straggling hedge and ditch snaked between two wide pastures. “If the goddam French come,” Sir John said bleakly, “just kill them.”

“You expecting their army, Sir John?” Thomas Evelgold asked.

“The one that was tracking us along the river?” Sir John asked, “those bastards will get here soon enough. But their larger army? God only knows. Let’s hope they think we’re still south of the river.”

And even if it was only the smaller army that came, Hook thought, these few archers of the vanguard could not hope to stop it. He sat by a stretch of flooded ditch, beneath a dead alder, staring north, his mind wandering. He had been a bad brother, he decided. He had never looked after Michael properly and, if he was truthful with himself, he would admit that his brother’s trusting character and unending optimism had grated on him. He gave a nod when Thomas Scarlet, who had lost his own twin brother to Lanferelle’s sword, squatted beside him. “I’m sorry about Michael,” Scarlet said awkwardly, “he was a good lad.”