Azincourt

‘But we’re not allowed out,’ Hook said.

‘No, you’re not allowed out,’ the ventenar conceded, ‘but you’re not prisoners.’ He grinned. ‘If you were prisoners, lad, you wouldn’t be cuddling that little lass every night. Where’s your bow?’

‘Lost it in France.’

‘Then let’s find you a new one.’ The ventenar said. He was called Venables and he had fought for the old king at Shrewsbury where he had taken an arrow in the leg that had left him with a limp. He led Hook to an undercroft of the great keep where there were wide wooden racks holding hundreds of newly made bows. ‘Pick one,’ Venables said.

It was dim in the undercroft where the bowstaves, each longer than a tall man, lay close together. None was strung, though all were tipped with horn nocks ready to take their cords. Hook pulled them out one by one and ran a hand across their thick bellies. The bows, he decided, had been well made. Some were knobbly where the bowyer had let a knot stand proud rather than weaken the wood, and most had a faintly greasy feel because they had been painted with a mix of wax and tallow. A few bows were unpainted, the wood still seasoning, but those bows were not yet ready for the cord and Hook ignored them. ‘They’re mostly made in Kent,’ Venables said, ‘but a few come from London. They don’t make good archers in this part of the world, boy, but they do make good bows.’

‘They do,’ Hook agreed. He had pulled one of the longest staves from the rack. The timber swelled to a thick belly that he gripped in his left hand as he flexed the upper limb a small amount. He took the bow to a place where sunlight shone through a rusted grating.

The stave was a thing of beauty, he thought. The yew had been cut in a southern country where the sun shone brighter, and this bow had been carved from the tree’s trunk. It was close-grained and had no knots. Hook ran his hand down the wood, feeling its swell and fingering the small ridges left by the bowyer’s float, the drawknife that shaped the weapon. The stave was new because the sapwood, which formed the back of the bow, was almost white. In time, he knew, it would turn to the colour of honey, but for now the bow’s back, which would be farthest from him when he hauled the cord, was the shade of Melisande’s breasts. The belly of the bow, made from the trunk’s heartwood, was dark brown, the colour of Melisande’s face, so that the bow seemed to be made of two strips of wood, one white and one brown, which were perfectly married, though in truth the stave was one single shaft of beautifully smoothed timber cut from where the heartwood and sapwood met in the yew’s trunk.

God made the bow, a priest had once said in Hook’s village church, as God made man and woman. The visiting priest had meant that God had married heartwood and sapwood, and it was this marriage that made the great war bow so lethal. The dark heartwood of the bow’s belly was stiff and unyielding. It resisted bending, while the light-coloured sapwood of the bow’s spine did not mind being pulled into a curve, yet, like the heartwood, it wanted to straighten and it possessed a springiness that, released from pressure, whipped the stave back to its normal shape. So the flexible spine pulled and the stiff belly pushed, and so the long arrow flew.

‘Have to be strong to pull that one,’ Venables said dubiously. ‘God knows what that bowyer was thinking! Maybe he thought Goliath needed a stave, eh?’

‘He didn’t want to cut the stave,’ Hook suggested, ‘because it’s perfect.’

‘If you think you can draw it, lad, it’s yours. Help yourself to a bracer,’ Venables said, gesturing to a pile of horn bracers, ‘and to a cord.’ He waved towards a barrel of strings.

The cords had a faintly sticky feel because the hemp had been coated with hoof glue to protect the strings from damp. Hook found a couple of long cords and tied a loop-knot in the end of one that he hooked over the notched horn-tip of the bow’s lower limb. Then, using all his strength, he flexed the bow to judge the length of cord needed, made a loop in the other end of the string and, again exerting every scrap of muscle power, bent the bow and slipped the new loop over the top horn nock. The centre of the cord, where it would lie on the horn-sliver in an arrow’s nock, had been whipped with more hemp to strengthen the string where it notched into the arrows.

‘Shoot it in,’ Venables suggested. He was a middle-aged man in the service of the Tower’s constable and he was a friendly soul, liking to spend his day chattering to anyone who would listen to his stories of battles long ago. He carried an arrow bag up to the stretch of mud and grass outside the keep and dropped it with a clatter. Hook put the bracer on his left forearm, tying its strings so the slip of horn lay on the inside of his wrist to protect his skin from the bowstring’s lash. A scream sounded and was cut off. ‘That’s Brother Bailey,’ Venables said in explanation.

‘Brother Bailey?’

‘Brother Bailey is a Benedictine,’ Venables said, ‘and the king’s chief torturer. He’s getting the truth out of some poor bastard.’

‘They wanted to torture me in Calais,’ Hook said.

‘They did?’

‘A priest did.’

‘They’re always eager to twist the rack, aren’t they? I never did understand that! They tell you God loves you, then they kick the shit out of you. Well, if they do question you, lad, tell them the truth.’

‘I did.’

‘Mind you, that doesn’t always help,’ Venables said. The scream sounded again and he jerked his head towards the muffled noise. ‘That poor bastard probably did tell the truth, but Brother Bailey does like to be certain, he does. Let’s see how that stave shoots, shall we?’

Hook planted a score of arrows point down in the soil. A faded and much punctured target was propped in front of a stack of rotting hay at the top of the stretch of grass. The range was short, no more than a hundred paces, and the target was twice as wide as a man and Hook would have expected to hit that easy mark every time, but he suspected his first arrows would fly wild.

The bow was under tension, but now he had to teach it to bend. He drew it only a short way the first time and the arrow scarcely reached the target. He drew it a little further, then again, each time bringing the cord closer to his face, yet never drawing the bow to its full curve. He shot arrow after arrow, and all the time he was learning the bow’s idiosyncrasies and the bow was learning to yield to his pressure, and it was an hour before he pulled the cord back to his ear and loosed the first arrow with the stave’s full power.

He did not know it, but he was smiling. There was a beauty there, a beauty of yew and hemp, of silk and feathers, of steel and ash, of man and weapon, of pure power, of the bow’s vicious tension that, released through fingers rubbed raw by the coarse hemp, shot the arrow to hiss in its flight and thump as it struck home. The last arrow went clean through the riddled target’s centre and buried itself to its feathers in the hay. ‘You’ve done this before,’ Venables said with a grin.

‘I have,’ Hook agreed, ‘but I’ve been away too long. Fingers are sore!’

‘They’ll harden fast, lad,’ Venables said, ‘and if they don’t torture and kill you, then you might think of joining us! Not a bad life at the Tower. Good food, plenty of it, and not much in the way of duties.’

‘I’d like that,’ Hook said absent-mindedly. He was concentrating on the bow. He had thought that the weeks of travel might have diminished his strength and eroded his skill, but he was pulling easily, loosing smoothly and aiming true. There was a slight ache in his shoulder and back, and his two fingertips were scraped raw, but that was all. And he was happy, he suddenly realised. That thought checked him, made him stare in wonder at the target. Saint Crispinian had guided him into a sunlit place and had given him Melisande, and then the happiness soured as he remembered he was still an outlaw. If Sir Martin or Lord Slayton discovered that Nicholas Hook was alive and in England they would demand him and would probably hang him.

‘Let’s see how quick you are,’ Venables suggested.

Hook pushed another handful of arrows into the turf and remembered the night of smoke and screams when the glimmering metal-clad men had come through the breach of Soissons and he had shot again and again, not thinking, not aiming, just letting the bow do its work. This new bow was stronger, more lethal, but just as quick. He did not think, he just loosed, picked a new arrow and laid it over the bow, raised the stave, hauled the cord and loosed again. A dozen arrows whickered over the turf and struck the target one after the other. If a man’s spread hand had been over the central mark then each arrow would have struck it.

‘Twelve,’ a cheerful voice said behind him, ‘one arrow for each disciple.’ Hook turned to see a priest watching him. The man, who had a round, merry face framed by wispy white hair, was carrying a great leather bag in one hand and had Melisande’s elbow firmly clutched in the other. ‘You must be Master Hook!’ the priest said, ‘of course you are! I’m Father Ralph, may I try?’ He put down the bag, released Melisande’s arm and reached for Hook’s bow. ‘Do allow me,’ he pleaded, ‘I used to draw the bow in my youth!’

Hook surrendered the bow and watched as Father Ralph tried to pull the cord. The priest was a well-built man, though grown rather portly from good living, but even so he only managed to pull the cord back about a hand’s breadth before the stave began quivering with the effort. Father Ralph shook his head. ‘I’m not the man I was!’ he said, then gave the bow back and watched as Hook, apparently effortlessly, bent the long stave to unhook the string. ‘It is time we all talked,’ Father Ralph said very cheerfully. ‘A most excellent day to you, Sergeant Venables, how are you?’

‘I’m well, father, very well!’ Venables grinned, bobbed his head and knuckled his forehead. ‘Leg doesn’t hurt much, father, not if the wind ain’t in the east.’

‘Then I shall pray God to send you nothing but west winds!’ Father Ralph said happily, ‘nothing but westerlies! Come, Master Hook! Shed light upon my darkness! Illuminate me!’

The priest, again clutching his bag, led Hook and Melisande to rooms built against the Tower’s curtain wall. The chamber he chose, which was small and panelled with carved timber, had two chairs and a table and Father Ralph insisted on finding a third chair. ‘Sit yourselves,’ he said, ‘sit, sit!’

He wished to know the full story of Soissons and so, in English and French, Hook and Melisande told their tale again. They described the assault, the rapes and the murders, and Father Ralph’s pen never stopped scratching. His bag contained sheets of parchment, an ink flask and quills, and he wrote unceasingly, occasionally throwing in a question. Melisande spoke the most, her voice sounding indignant as she recounted the night’s horrors. ‘Tell me about the nuns,’ Father Ralph said, then made a fluttery gesture as if he had been a fool and repeated the question in French. Melisande sounded ever more indignant, staring wide-eyed at Father Ralph when he motioned her to silence so his pen could catch up with her flood of words.

Hoofbeats sounded outside and, a few moments later, there was the clangour of swords striking each other. Hook, as Melisande told her story, looked through the open window to see men-at-arms practising on the ground where his arrows had flown. They were all dressed in full plate armour that made a dull sound if a blade struck. One man, distinctive because his armour was black, was being attacked by two others and he was defending himself skilfully, though Hook had the impression that the two men were not trying as hard as they might. A score of other men applauded the contest. ‘Et gladius diaboli,’ Father Ralph read aloud slowly as he finished writing a sentence, ‘repletus est sanguine. Good! Oh, that is most excellent!’

‘Is that Latin, father?’ Hook asked.

‘It is, yes! Yes, indeed! Latin! The language of God! Or perhaps He speaks Hebrew? I suppose that’s more likely and it will make things rather awkward in heaven, won’t it? Will we all have to learn Hebrew? Or maybe we shall find ourselves gloriously voluble in that language when we reach the heavenly pastures. I was saying how the devil’s sword was slaked with blood!’ Father Ralph chuckled at that sentiment, then motioned for Melisande to continue. He wrote again, his pen flying over the parchment. The sound of confident male laughter sounded from the turf outside where two other men-at-arms now fought, their swords quick in the sunlight. ‘You wonder,’ Father Ralph asked when he had finished yet another page, ‘why I transcribe your tale into Latin?’

‘Yes, father.’

‘So all Christendom will know what sanguinary devils the French are! We shall copy this tale a hundred times and send it to every bishop, every abbot, every king and every prince in Christendom. Let them know the truth of Soissons! Let them know how the French treat their own people! Let them know that Satan’s dwelling place is in France, eh?’ He smiled.

‘Satan does live there,’ a harsh voice spoke behind Hook, ‘and he must be driven out!’ Hook twisted in his chair to see that the black-armoured man-at-arms was standing in the doorway. He had taken off his helmet and his brown hair was plastered down by sweat in which an impression of his helmet liner remained. He was a young man who looked familiar, though Hook could not place him, but then Hook saw the deep scar beside the long nose and he almost knocked the chair over as he scrambled to kneel before his king. His heart was beating fast and the terror was as great as when he had waited by the breach at Soissons. The king. That was all he could think of, this was the king.

Henry made an irritable gesture that Hook should rise, an order Hook was too nervous to obey. The king edged between the table and the wall to look at what Father Ralph had written. ‘My Latin is not what it should be,’ he said, ‘but the gist is clear enough.’

‘It confirms all the rumours we heard, sire,’ Father Ralph said.

‘Sir Roger Pallaire?’

‘Killed by this young man, sire,’ Father Ralph said, gesturing at Hook.

‘He was a traitor,’ the king said coldly, ‘our agents in France have confirmed that.’

‘He screams in hell now, sire,’ Father Ralph said, ‘and his screams shall not end with time itself.’

‘Good,’ Henry said curtly and sifted the pages. ‘Nuns? Surely not?’

‘Indeed, sire,’ Father Ralph said. ‘The brides of Christ were violated and murdered. They were dragged from their prayers to become playthings, sire. We had heard of it and we had scarce dared to believe it, but this young lady confirms it.’

The king rested his gaze on Melisande, who, like Hook, had dropped to her knees where, like Hook, she quivered with nervousness. ‘Get up,’ the king said to her, then looked at a crucifix hanging on the wall. He frowned and bit his lower lip. ‘Why did God allow it, father?’ he asked after a while, and there was both pain and puzzlement in his voice. ‘Nuns? God should have protected them, surely? He should have sent angels to guard them!’