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

It began to rain again at midday. It was just a drizzle, but it penetrated every gap in Hook’s clothing. Raker, his horse, went slowly. The whole army was going slowly, incapable of speed. They passed a town and Hook, so dulled now to what he saw, scarce looked at the walls with their brightly defiant banners. He just rode on, following the road, leaving the town and its battlements behind until, quite suddenly, Hook knew they were doomed.

He and his men had breasted a small rise and in front of them was a wide grassy valley, its far side rising gently to the horizon where there was a church tower and a spread of woods. The valley was pastureland, empty of life now, but scarred across the valley floor was the evidence of their approaching doom.

Hook curbed Raker and stared.

Because right across his front, stretching from east to west, was a smear of mud, a great wide scar of churned land where every blade of grass had vanished. Water glinted from the myriad holes left by the hooves of horses. The ground was a mess, churned and rutted and broken and pitted, because an army had marched through the valley.

It must have been a great army, Hook thought. Thousands of horses had left the tracks that were newly made. He rode to the edge of the scar and saw the clarity of the hoofprints so distinctly that in places he could see the marks left by the horseshoe nails. He stared westward, to where that vanished army had gone, but he saw nothing, only the path by which the thousands of men had traveled. The scarred earth turned north at the valley’s end.

“Sweet Jesus,” Tom Scarlet said in awe, “there must be thousands of the bastards.”

“Ride back,” Hook told Peter Scoyle, “find Sir John, tell him about this.”

“Tell him about what?” Scoyle asked.

Hook remembered Scoyle was a Londoner. “What do you think that is?” He pointed at the scarred earth.

“A muddy mess,” Scoyle said.

“Tell Sir John the enemy was here within the last day.”

“They were?”

“Go!” Hook said impatiently, then turned back to stare at the myriad hoofprints. There were thousands upon thousands, so many they had trampled the valley into a quagmire. He had seen the drovers’ roads in England after the vast herds of cattle had been driven down to their slaughter in London, and as a boy he had been amazed by the size of the herds, but these tracks were far greater than any left by those doomed animals. Every man in France, he thought, and maybe every man in Burgundy, had ridden across this valley, and they had passed within the last day. So somewhere to the west or north, somewhere between this place and Calais, that great host waited.

“They have to be watching us,” he said.

“Sweet Jesus,” Tom Scarlet said again, and made the sign of the cross. Both archers looked at the farther woods, but no glint of reflected sunlight betrayed a man in armor. Yet Hook was sure the enemy must have scouts who were shadowing England’s tired army.

Sir John arrived with a dozen men-at-arms. He said nothing as he stared at the tracks and then, as Hook had done, he looked westward and then northward. “So they’re here,” he finally said, sounding resigned.

“That’s not the small army that was following us along the river,” Hook said.

“Of course it goddam well isn’t,” Sir John said, looking at the rutted fields. “That’s the might of France, Hook,” he said sarcastically.

“And they must be watching us, Sir John,” Hook said.

“You need a shave, Hook,” Sir John said harshly. “You look like a goddamned vagabond.”

“Yes, Sir John.”

“And of course the cabbage-shitting farts are watching us. So fly the banners! And damn them! Damn them, damn them, damn them!” He shouted the mild curses, startling Lucifer who flicked back his ears. “Damn them and keep going!” Sir John said.

Because there was no choice. And next day, though there was still no sign of the enemy army, there came proof that the French knew exactly where the English were because three heralds waited on the road. They were in their bright liveries, carrying the long white wands of their office, and Hook greeted them politely and sent for Sir John again, and Sir John took the three heralds to the king.

“What did those fancy bastards want?” Will of the Dale asked.

“They wanted to invite us all to breakfast,” Hook said. “Bacon, bread, fried goose liver, pease pudding, good ale.”

Will grinned. “I’d strangle my own mother for a bowl of beans now, just plain beans.”

“Beans, bread, and bacon,” Hook said wistfully.

“Roast ox,” Will said, “with juices dripping.”

“Just a lump of bread would do,” Hook said. He knew the three Frenchmen would learn much from their visit. Heralds were supposed to be above faction, mere observers and messengers, but the three men would surely tell the French commanders of the English troops scurrying off the road to lower their breeches and void their bowels, of the sagging horses, of the bedraggled, silent army that traveled north and west so slowly.

“They challenged us to battle,” Father Christopher said after the heralds had left. The chaplain, inevitably, knew what had happened when the three French emissaries met the king. “It was all exceedingly polite,” he told Hook and his archers, “everyone bowed very prettily, exchanged charming compliments, agreed the weather was most inclement, and then our guests issued their challenge.”

“Nice of them,” Hook said sarcastically.

“The niceties are important,” the priest said chidingly, “you don’t dance with a woman without asking her first, not in polite society, so now the Constable of France and the Duke of Bourbon and the Duke of Orleans are inviting us to dance.”

“Who are they?” Tom Scarlet asked.

“The constable is Charles d’Albret, and pray he doesn’t dance face to face with you, Tom, and the dukes are great men. The Duke of Bourbon is an old friend of yours, Hook.”

“Of mine?”

“He led the army that ruined Soissons.”

“Jesus,” Hook said, and again thought of the blind archers bleeding to death on the cobblestones.

“And each of the dukes,” Father Christopher went on, “probably leads a contingent greater than our whole army.”

“And the king accepted their invitation?” Hook asked.

“Oh willingly!” Father Christopher said. “He loves to dance, though he declined to name a place for the dance. He said the French would doubtless have no trouble finding us.”

And now, because he knew the French would have no such trouble, and because his army might have to fight at any moment, the king ordered every man to ride in full panoply. They were to wear armor and surcoats, though most armor and jupons were now so stained or rusted and ragged that they would hardly impress an enemy, let alone overawe one. And still no enemy appeared.

No enemy showed on the feast day of Saint Cordula, the British virgin who had been slaughtered by pagans, nor the next day, the feast of Saint Felix who had been beheaded for refusing to yield the holy scriptures in his possession. The army had been marching for more than two weeks, and the next day was the feast of Saint Raphael who Father Christopher said was one of the seven archangels who stand before the throne of God. “And you know what tomorrow is?” Father Christopher asked Hook on Saint Raphael’s Day.

Hook had to think about his answer which, when it came, was uncertain. “Is it a Wednesday?”

“No,” Father Christopher said, smiling, “tomorrow is a Friday.”

“Then I know tomorrow’s Friday,” Hook said, grinning, “and you’ll make us all eat fish, father. Maybe a nice fat trout? Or an eel?”

“Tomorrow,” Father Christopher said gently, “is the feast day of Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian.”

“Oh, dear God,” Hook said, and felt as though cold water had suddenly washed his heart, though he could not tell whether that was fear or the sudden certitude that such a day presaged a real and beneficial significance.