Agincourt - Cornwell Bernard - Страница 32

The marsh was a bowshot wide, a little more than two hundred paces. Hook could shoot further, but so could every crossbowman in France and, as he splashed toward the dark woods that grew almost to the marsh’s edge, he watched the black shadows in fear of a sudden noise that would betray the release of a bolt. The French had known the English were coming. They would have had spies counting the shipping in Southampton Water and the fishermen would have brought news that the great fleet was off the coast. And the French had taken the trouble to defend even this small cove with an elaborate earthwork, so why were they not manning it? Because, Hook thought, they were waiting in the woods. Because they wanted to kill this advance party as it crossed the marsh.

“Hook! Tom and Matt! Dale! Go right!” Goddington waved the four men toward the eastern side of the marsh. “Head on up the hill!”

Hook splashed off to his right, followed by the twins and by William of the Dale. Behind them the men-at-arms were grouped on the track. Every man, whether lord or archer, was wearing the badge of Saint George on his surcoat. The legs of the men-at-arms were cased in plate armor that reflected the moon white and bright, while their drawn swords looked like streaks of purest silver. No crossbow bolts flew from the woods. If the French were waiting then they must be higher up the slope.

Hook climbed a short bank of crumbling earth at the marsh’s northern edge. He turned to see the fleet on the moon-glittered sea, its few lanterns dull red and its masts a forest. The stars were brilliant. He turned back to the wood’s edge that was black as the pit. “Bows are no good in the trees,” he told his companions. He unstrung the stave and slipped it into the horsehide case that had been folded and tucked in his belt. Leave a bow strung too long and it followed the cord to become permanently curved and so lost its power. It was better to store the stave straight and so he slung the case’s leather loop over his shoulder and drew his short sword. His three companions did the same and then followed Hook into the trees.

No Frenchman waited. No sudden sword blow greeted Hook, no crossbow bolt whipped from the dark. There was nothing but the sound of the sea and the blackness under the leaves and the small sounds of a wood at night.

Hook was at home in the trees, even among these foreign trees. Thomas and Matthew Scarlet were fuller’s sons, reared to a mill where great water-driven beams thumped clay into cloth to release the wool’s grease. William of the Dale was a carpenter, but Hook was a forester and a huntsman and he instinctively took the lead. He could hear men off to his left and, not wanting them to mistake him for a Frenchman, headed further to his right. He could smell a boar, and remembered a winter dawn when he had put five man-killing arrows into a great tusked male that had still charged him, arrows clattering in its side, anger fierce in its small eyes, and Hook had only escaped by scrambling up an oak. The boar had died eventually, its hooves stirring the blood-soaked leaf mold as its life drained away.

“Where are we going?” Thomas Scarlet asked.

“Top of the hill,” Hook answered curtly.

“What do we do there?”

“We wait,” Hook said. He did not know the answer. He could smell woodsmoke now, the pungent scent betraying that folk were nearby. He wondered if there was a charcoal-making camp in the woods because that would explain the smell, or perhaps the unseen fire warmed crossbowmen who waited for their targets to appear on the hilltop.

“We’re going to kill the turd-sucking bastards,” William of the Dale said in his uncanny imitation of Sir John. Matt Scarlet laughed.

“Quiet,” Hook said sharply, “and go faster!” If crossbowmen were waiting then it was better to move quickly rather than present an easy target, but his instincts were telling him that there was no enemy in these trees. The wood felt deserted. When he had hunted deer-poachers on Lord Slayton’s land he had always felt their presence, a knowledge that came from beyond sight, smell, or hearing; an instinct. Hook reckoned these woods were empty, yet there was still that smell of woodsmoke. Instinct could be wrong.

The slope flattened and the trees became sparser. Hook was still leading his companions to the east, anxious to stay well away from a nervous English archer. Then, suddenly, he had reached the summit and the trees ended to reveal a sunken road running along the ridge. “Bows,” he told his companions, though he did not unsheathe his own stave. He had heard something off to his left, some noise that could not have been made by any of Sir John’s men. It was the thump of a hoof.

The four archers crouched in the trees above the road. The hoofbeats sounded louder, but nothing could be seen. It was one horse, Hook thought, judging from the sound, and then, suddenly, the horse and its rider were visible, riding eastward. The rider was swathed in darkness as if he wore a cloak, but Hook could see no weapons. “Don’t shoot,” he told his companions, “he’s mine.”

Hook waited till the horseman was nearly opposite his hiding place, then leaped down the bank and snatched at the bridle. The horse slewed and reared. Hook reached up with his free hand, grasped a handful of the rider’s cloak and hauled downward. The horse whinnied, but obeyed Hook’s touch, while the rider gasped as he thumped hard onto the road. The man tried to scramble away, but Hook kicked him hard in the belly, and then Thomas, Matthew, and William were at his side, hauling the prisoner to his feet.

“He’s a monk!” William of the Dale said.

“He was riding to fetch help,” Hook said. That was a guess, but hardly a difficult surmise.

The monk began to protest, speaking too quickly for Hook to understand any of his words. He spoke loudly too. “Shut your face,” Hook said, and the monk, as if in response, began to shout his protests, so Hook hit him once and the monk’s head snapped back and blood sprang from his nose, and he went instantly quiet. He was a young man who now looked very scared.

“I told you to shut your face,” Hook said. “You three, whistle! Whistle loud!”

William, Matthew, and Thomas whistled “Robin Hood’s Lament” as Hook led the prisoner and horse back along the road that lay sunken between two tree-shrouded banks. The track curved to the left to reveal a great stone building with a tower. It looked like a church. “Une eglise?” he asked the monk.

“Un monastere,” the monk said sullenly.

“Keep whistling,” Hook said.

“What did he say?” Tom Scarlet asked.

“He said it’s a monastery. Now whistle!”

Smoke came from a chimney of the monastery, explaining the smell that had haunted Hook as they climbed the hill. No one else from the landing party was in sight yet, but as Hook led his small party toward the building a gate opened and a wash of lantern light revealed a group of monks standing in the gateway. “Arrows on strings,” Hook said, “and keep goddam whistling, for God’s sake.”

A tall, thin, gray-haired man, robed in black, advanced down the track. “Je suis le prieur,” he announced himself.

“What did he say?” Tom Scarlet asked.

“He says he’s the prior,” Hook said, “just keep whistling.”

The prior reached out a hand as if to take the bloodied monk, but Hook turned on him and the tall man stepped hastily back. The other monks began to protest, but then more archers came from the woods and Sir John Holland and his stepfather appeared around the priory’s edge with the men-at-arms.

“Well done, Hook!” Sir John Cornewaille shouted, “got yourself a horse!”

“And a monk, Sir John,” Hook said. “He was riding for help, leastways I think he was.”

Sir John strode to Hook’s side. The prior made the sign of the cross as the men-at-arms filled the road in front of the monastery, then stepped toward Sir John and made a voluble complaint that involved frequent gestures at Hook and at the bleeding monk. Sir John tipped up the wounded man’s face to inspect the broken nose by moonlight. “They must have sent a warning of our arrival yesterday,” he said, “so this man was plainly sent to tell someone we were landing. Did you hit him, Hook?”