Agincourt - Cornwell Bernard - Страница 26

“Un brochet!” Melisande said with delight.

“A pike,” Hook said, “and there’s good eating on a pike.” He gutted the fish on the bank, spilling the offal back into the river.

Next day Sir John led a contingent of men-at-arms and archers westward to buy grain, dried peas, and smoked meat, and Sir John gave Hook the easy duty, which was to stay in a village under a fold of the hills and to guard the sacks and barrels that were being piled on a wagon, which stood outside a tavern called the Mouse and Cheese. The wagon’s two draft horses were picketed on the village green. Hook’s bow, unstrung, lay on an outside table beside the pot of ale that the tavern keeper had given him, but Hook was up on the wagon bed, pounding flour into a barrel. Father Christopher, dressed in shirt, breeches, and boots, wandered aimlessly, peering into the cottages, petting cats, and teasing the women who washed clothes in the stream that edged the village’s one street. He finally came back to the Mouse and Cheese and dropped a small bag of silver coins onto the table. It was the priest’s job to pay for any food that a farmer or villager might wish to sell. “Why are you hitting the flour, young Hook?” the priest asked.

“I’m packing it down tight, father. Salt, hazel, and flour!”

Father Christopher gave an exaggerated grimace of distaste. “You’re salting the flour?”

“There’s a layer of salt at the bottom of the barrel,” Hook explained, “to stop the flour getting damp, and I add the hazel to keep it fresh.” He showed Father Christopher some hazel wands he had plucked from a hedge and stripped of their leaves.

“And that works?” the priest asked.

“Of course it does! Did you never fetch flour from a mill?”

“Hook!” the priest protested, “I’m a man of God. We don’t actually work!” He laughed.

Hook thrust another pair of wands into the barrel, then stood back and dusted his hands. “Aye, well that’s a good piece of work,” he said, nodding at the flour.

Father Christopher smiled benignly, then leaned back and gazed at the sunlit woods climbing the hills above the thatched roofs. “God, I love England,” he said, “and God knows why young Hal wants France.”

“Because he’s the King of France,” Hook said.

Father Christopher shrugged. “He’s got a claim, Hook, but so do others. If I were King of England I’d stay here. Is this your ale?”

“It is, father.”

“Be a Christian and give me some.” Father Christopher said, then raised the pot in Hook’s direction and drank from it. “But to France we go, and doubtless we’ll win!”

“We will?”

“Only God knows the answer to that, Hook,” Father Christopher said, suddenly thoughtful. “There’s a powerful lot of Frenchmen! And if they stop quarreling among themselves and turn on us? Still, we have these things,” he slapped Hook’s bow, “and they don’t.”

“Can I ask you something, father?” Hook said, climbing down from the wagon and sitting beside the priest.

“Oh, for Christ’s blessed sake don’t ask me which side God is on.”

“You told us He was on our side!”

“True, Hook, I did, and there are thousands of French priests saying the same thing to the French!” Father Christopher grinned. “Let me give you some priestly advice, Hook. Put your trust in the yew bow, my boy, and not in any priest’s words.”

Hook touched the bow, feeling the slick tallow he had rubbed into the wood. “What do you know about Saint Crispinian, father?”

“Oh, a theological inquiry,” Father Christopher said. He drank the rest of Hook’s ale, then rapped the pot on the table as a signal that he needed more. “Not sure I remember much! I didn’t really study as I should at Oxford. There were too many girls I liked.” He smiled for a moment. “There was a brothel there, Hook, where all the girls dressed as nuns. You could hardly get inside the house because of priests! I met the Bishop of Oxford there at least half a dozen times. Happy days.” He sighed and gave Hook a sideways grin. “So, what do I know? Well, Crispinian had a brother called Crispin, though not everyone says they were brothers. Some say they were noblemen, and some say they weren’t. They might have been shoemakers, which doesn’t sound like a nobleman’s occupation, does it? They were certainly Romans. They lived about a thousand years ago, Hook, and of course they were martyred.”

“So Crispinian’s in heaven,” Hook said.

“He and his brother live on the right hand of God,” Father Christopher confirmed, “where I hope they get quicker service than I do!” He rapped the table again, and a girl came running from the tavern door to be greeted with a wide priestly smile. “More ale, my lovely darling,” Father Christopher said, and rolled one of Sir John’s coins down the table. “Two pots, my sweet,” he smiled again, then sighed when the girl had gone. “Oh, I wish I were young again.”

“You are young, father.”

“Dear God, I’m forty-three! I’ll be dead soon! I’ll be as dead as Crispinian, but he was a hard man to kill.”

“He was?”

Father Christopher frowned. “I’m trying to remember. He and Crispin were tortured because they were Christians. They were racked, and they had nails driven under their fingernails, and strips of flesh cut out of them, but none of that killed them! They were singing God’s praises to the torturers all the time! Not sure I could be that brave.” He made the sign of the cross, then smiled as the girl put down the ale. He waved off the coins she offered as change.

“So there they were,” he went on, enjoying his tale, “and the man who was torturing them decided to finish them off quickly, maybe because he was tired of hearing them sing, so he tied millstones around their necks and threw them into a river. But that didn’t work either because the millstones floated! So the torturer had them pulled out of the river and threw them onto a fire! And even that didn’t kill them. They went on singing and the fire wouldn’t touch them, and God filled the torturer with despair and the wretched man threw himself on the fire instead. He burned, but the two saints lived.”

A small group of horsemen appeared at the end of the village street. Hook glanced at them, but none was wearing Sir John Cornewaille’s livery, so he turned back to the priest.

“God had saved the brothers from the torture and from the drowning and from the fire,” Father Christopher said, “but for some reason He let them die anyway. They had their heads chopped off by the emperor, and that stopped them singing. It would, wouldn’t it?”

“But it was still a miracle,” Hook said in wonderment.

“It was a miracle they survived so long,” Father Christopher agreed. “But why are you so interested in Crispinian? He’s really a French saint, not ours. He and his brother went to France, see? To do their work.”

Hook hesitated, not sure whether he wanted to confess that a headless saint talked to him, but before he could decide either way a voice sneered. “God’s belly!” the voice said, “look who we have here! Master Nicholas Hook!”

Hook looked up to see Sir Martin leering triumphantly from his horse. There were eight horsemen and all but Sir Martin were wearing Lord Slayton’s moon and stars. Thomas Perrill and his brother Robert were among the riders, as was Lord Slayton’s centenar, William Snoball. Hook knew them all.

“Friends of yours?” Father Christopher asked.

“I thought you were dead, Hook,” Sir Martin said. He was in a priest’s robe that was tucked up so his skinny legs could straddle the horse and, though priests were forbidden to carry edged weapons, he wore an old-fashioned sword with a wide crosspiece on the hilt. “I hoped you were dead,” he added, “doomed, damned and dead.” His long face grimaced in what might have been a smile.

“I live,” Hook said curtly.

“And you wear another man’s livery,” Sir Martin said, “which is not right, Hook, not right at all. It defies law and the scriptures, and Lord Slayton will not like it. Is this yours?” He pointed to the wagon.