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

“He was,” Hook said.

“Matt was too.”

“Aye, he was. A good archer.”

“He was,” Scarlet said, “he was.”

They looked north in silence. Sir John had said that the first evidence of a French force would be mounted scouts, but no horsemen were visible.

“Michael always snatched at the string,” Hook said. “I tried to teach him, but he couldn’t stop it. He always snatched. Spoiled his aim, it did.”

“It does,” Scarlet said.

“He never learned,” Hook said, “and he didn’t steal that goddamned box either.”

“He didn’t seem like a thief.”

“He wasn’t! But I know who did steal it, and I’ll cut his goddam throat.”

“Don’t hang for it, Nick.”

Hook grimaced. “If the French catch us, it won’t matter, will it? I’ll either be hanged or chopped down.” Hook had a sudden vision of the archers dying in their tortured agony in front of the little church in Soissons. He shivered.

“But we’ve crossed the river,” Scarlet said firmly, “and that’s good. How far now?”

“Father Christopher says it’s a week’s marching from here, maybe a day or two longer.”

“That’s what they said a couple of weeks ago,” Scarlet said ruefully, “but doesn’t matter. We can go hungry for a week.”

Geoffrey Horrocks, the youngest archer, brought a helmet filled with hazelnuts. “Found them up the hedge,” he said, “you want to share them out, sergeant?” he asked Hook.

“You do it, lad. Tell them it’s supper.”

“And tomorrow’s breakfast,” Scarlet said.

“If I had a net we could catch some sparrows,” Hook said.

“Sparrow pie,” Scarlet said wistfully.

They fell silent. The rain had stopped, though the keen wind was chilling the wet archers to the bone. A flock of black starlings, so thick that they looked like a writhing cloud, rose and fell two fields away. Behind Hook, far across the river, men labored to remake the causeways.

“He was a grown man, you know.”

“What did you say, Tom?” Hook asked, startled from half-waking thoughts.

“Nothing,” Scarlet said, “I was falling asleep till you woke me.”

“He was a very good man,” the voice said quietly, “and he’s resting in heaven now.”

Saint Crispinian, Hook thought, and his view of the country was misted by tears. You’re still with me, he wanted to say.

“In heaven there are no tears,” the saint went on, “and no sickness. There’s no dying and no masters. There’s no hunger. Michael is in joy.”

“You all right, Nick?” Tom Scarlet asked.

“I’m all right,” Hook said, and thought that Crispinian knew all about brothers. He had suffered and died with his own brother, Crispin, and they were both with Michael now, and somehow that seemed good.

It took the best part of the day to restore the two causeways and then the army began to cross in two long lines of horses and wagons and archers and servants and women. The king, resplendent in armor and crown, galloped past Hook’s ditch. He was followed by a score of nobles who curbed their horses and, like Hook, gazed northward. But the French army that had been keeping pace along the river’s northern bank had fallen far behind and there was no enemy in sight. The English were across the river and now had entered territory claimed by the Duke of Burgundy, though it was still France. But between the army and England there were now no major obstacles unless the French army intervened.

“We march on,” Henry told his commanders.

They would march north again, north and west. They would march toward Calais, toward England and to safety. They marched.

They left the wide River Somme behind, but next day, because the army was footsore, sick, and hungry, the king ordered a halt. The rain had cleared and the sun shone through wispy clouds. The army was now in well-wooded country so there was fuel for fires and the encampment took on a holiday air as men hung their clothes to dry on makeshift hurdles. Sentries were set, but it seemed as though England’s army was all alone in the vastness of France. Not one Frenchman appeared. Men scavenged the woods for nuts, mushrooms, and berries. Hook hoped to find a deer or a boar, but the animals, like the enemy, were nowhere to be seen.

“We might just have escaped,” Father Christopher greeted Hook on his return from his abortive hunt.

“The king must think so,” Hook said.

“Why?”

“Giving us a day’s halt?”

“Our gracious king,” the priest said, “is so mad that he might just be hoping the French will catch us.”

“Mad? Like the French king?”

“The French king is really mad,” Father Christopher said, “no, our king is just convinced of God’s favor.”

“Is that madness?”

Father Christopher paused as Melisande came to join them. She leaned on Hook, saying nothing. She was thinner than Hook had ever seen her, but the whole army was thin now; thin, hungry, and ill. Somehow Hook and his wife had both avoided the bowel-emptying sickness, though many others had caught the disease and the camp stank of it. Hook put his arm about her, holding her close and thinking suddenly that she had become the most precious thing in all his world. “I hope to God we have escaped,” Hook said.

“And our king half hopes that,” Father Christopher said, “and half hopes that he can prove God’s favor.”

“And that’s his madness?”

“Beware of certainty. There are men in the French army, Hook, who are as convinced as Henry that God is on their side. They’re good men too. They pray, they give alms, they confess their sins, and they vow never to sin again. They are very good men. Can they be wrong in their conviction?”

“You tell me, father,” Hook said.

Father Christopher sighed. “If I understood God, Hook, I would understand everything because God is everything. He is the stars and the sand, the wind and the calm, the sparrow and the sparrowhawk. He knows everything, He knows my fate and He knows your fate, and if I understood all that, what would I be?”

“You would be God,” Melisande said.

“And that I cannot be,” Father Christopher said, “because we cannot comprehend everything. Only God does that, so beware of a man who says he knows God’s will. He is like a horse that believes it controls its rider.”

“And our king believes that?”

“He believes he is God’s favorite,” Father Christopher said, “and perhaps he is. He is a king, after all, anointed and blessed.”

“God made him a king,” Melisande said.

“His father’s sword made him a king,” Father Christopher said tartly, “but, of course, God could have guided that sword.” He made the sign of the cross. “Yet there are those,” he spoke softly now, “who say his father had no right to the throne. And the sins of the fathers are visited on their sons.”

“You’re saying…” Hook began, then checked his tongue because the conversation was veering dangerously close to treason.

“I’m saying,” Father Christopher said firmly, “that I pray we get home to England before the French find us.”

“They’ve lost us, father,” Hook said, hoping he was right.

Father Christopher smiled gently. “They may not know where we are, Hook, but they know where we’re going. So they don’t need to find us, do they? All they need do is get ahead of us and let us find them.”

“And we’re resting for the day,” Hook said grimly.

“So we are,” the priest said, “which means we must pray that our enemy is at least two days’ march behind us.”

Next day they rode on. Hook was one of the scouts who ranged two miles ahead of the vanguard and looked for the enemy. He liked being a scout. It meant he could put his sharpened stake on a wagon and ride free in front of the army. The clouds were thickening again and the wind was cold. There had been a frost whitening the grass when the camp stirred, though it had vanished quickly enough. The beech leaves had turned to a dull red-gold and the oaks to the color of bronze, while some trees had already shed their foliage. The lower pastures were half flooded from the recent rain, while the fields that had been deep-plowed for winter wheat showed long streaks of silvery water between the ridges left by the plowshare. Hook’s men were following a drover’s path that led past villages, but the hovels were all empty. There was no livestock and no grain. Someone, he thought, knew the English were on this road and had stripped the countryside bare, but whoever had organized that deprivation had vanished. There was no sign of an enemy.