Azincourt

A plump girl with a scarred face brought a jug of ale from the tavern. She filled the archers’ pots and her face showed nothing as Snoball groped beneath her heavy skirts. She waited till he had finished, then held out a hand.

‘No, no, darling,’ Snoball said, ‘I did you a favour so you should reward me.’ The girl turned and went indoors. Michael, Hook’s younger brother, stared at the table and Tom Perrill sneered at the young man’s embarrassment, but said nothing. There was little joy to be had in provoking Michael, who was too good-hearted to take offence.

Hook watched the royal men-at-arms who had stopped the handcarts in the centre of the marketplace where two long stakes were stood upright in two big barrels. The stakes were being fixed in place by packing the barrels with stones and gravel. A man-at-arms tested one of the stakes, trying to tip or dislodge it, but the work had evidently been well done, for he could not shift the tall timber. He jumped down and the labourers began stacking bundles of firewood around the twin barrels.

‘Royal firewood,’ Snoball said, ‘burns brighter.’

‘Does it really?’ Michael Hook asked. He tended to believe everything he was told and waited eagerly for an answer, but the other archers ignored his question.

‘At last,’ Tom Perrill said instead, and Hook saw a small crowd emerging from a church at the far side of the marketplace. The crowd was composed of ordinary-looking folk, but it was surrounded by soldiers, monks and priests, and one of those priests now headed towards the tavern called the Bull.

‘Here’s Sir Martin,’ Snoball said, as if his companions would not recognise the priest who, as he drew nearer, grinned. Hook felt a tremor of hatred as he saw the eel-thin Sir Martin with his loping stride, lopsided face and his strange, intense eyes that some thought looked beyond this world to the next, though opinion varied whether Sir Martin gazed at hell or heaven. Hook’s grandmother had no doubts. ‘He was bitten by the devil’s dog,’ she liked to say, ‘and if he hadn’t been born gentry he’d have been hanged by now.’

The archers stood with grudging respect as the priest drew near. ‘God’s work waits on you, boys,’ Sir Martin greeted them. His dark hair was grey at the sides and thin on top. He had not shaved for some days and his long chin was covered in white stubble that reminded Hook of frost. ‘We need a ladder,’ Sir Martin said, ‘and Sir Edward’s bringing the ropes. Nice to see the gentry working, isn’t it? We need a long ladder. There has to be one somewhere.’

‘A ladder,’ Will Snoball said, as if he had never heard of such a thing.

‘A long one,’ Sir Martin said, ‘long enough to reach that beam.’ He jerked his head at the sign of the bull over their heads. ‘Long, long.’ He said the last words distractedly, as if he were already forgetting what business he was about.

‘Look for a ladder,’ Will Snoball told two of the archers, ‘a long one.’

‘No short ladders for God’s work,’ Sir Martin said, snapping his attention back to the archers. He rubbed his thin hands together and grimaced at Hook. ‘You look ill, Hook,’ he added happily, as if hoping Nick Hook were dying.

‘The ale tastes funny,’ Hook said.

‘That’s because it’s Friday,’ the priest said, ‘and you should abstain from ale on Wednesdays and Fridays. Your name-saint, the blessed Nicholas, rejected his mother’s teats on Wednesdays and Fridays, and there’s a lesson in that! There can be no pleasures for you, Hook, on Wednesdays and Fridays. No ale, no joy and no tits, that is your fate for ever. And why, Hook, why?’ Sir Martin paused and his long face twisted in a malevolent grin, ‘Because you have supped on the sagging tits of evil! I will not have mercy on her children, the scriptures say, because their mother hath played the harlot!’

Tom Perrill sniggered. ‘What are we doing, father?’ Will Snoball asked tiredly.

‘God’s work, Master Snoball, God’s holy work. Go to it.’

A ladder was found as Sir Edward Derwent crossed the market square with four ropes looped about his broad shoulders. Sir Edward was a man-at-arms and wore the same livery as the archers, though his jupon was cleaner and its colours were brighter. He was a squat, thick-chested man with a face disfigured at the battle of Shrewsbury where a poleaxe had ripped open his helmet, crushed a cheekbone and sliced off an ear. ‘Bell ropes,’ he explained, tossing the heavy coils onto the ground. ‘Need them tied to the beam, and I’m not climbing any ladder.’ Sir Edward commanded Lord Slayton’s men-at-arms and he was as respected as he was feared. ‘Hook, you do it,’ Sir Edward ordered.

Hook climbed the ladder and tied the bell ropes to the beam. He used the knot with which he would have looped a hempen cord about a bowstave’s nock, though the ropes, being thicker, were much harder to manipulate. When he was done he shinned down the last rope to show that it was tied securely.

‘Let’s get this done and over,’ Sir Edward said sourly, ‘and then maybe we can leave this goddamned place. Whose ale is this?’

‘Mine, Sir Edward,’ Robert Perrill said.

‘Mine now,’ Sir Edward said, and drained the pot. He was dressed in a mail coat over a leather jerkin, all of it covered with the starry jupon. A sword hung at his waist. There was nothing elaborate about the weapon. The blade, Hook knew, was undecorated, the hilt was plain steel, and the handle was two grips of walnut bolted to the tang. The sword was a tool of Sir Edward’s trade, and he had used it to batter down the rebel whose poleaxe had taken half his face.

The small crowd had been herded by soldiers and priests into the centre of the marketplace where most of them knelt and prayed. There were maybe sixty of them, men and women, young and old. ‘Can’t burn them all,’ Sir Martin said regretfully, ‘so we’re sending most to hell at the rope’s end.’

‘If they’re heretics,’ Sir Edward grumbled, ‘they should all be burned.’

‘If God wished that,’ Sir Martin said with some asperity, ‘then God would have provided sufficient firewood.’

More people were appearing now. Fear still pervaded the city, but folk somehow sensed that the greatest moment of danger was over, and so they came to the marketplace and Sir Martin ordered the archers to let them pass. ‘They should see this for themselves,’ the priest explained. There was a sullenness in the gathering crowd, their sympathies plainly aligned with the prisoners and not the guards, though here and there a priest or friar preached an extemporary sermon to justify the day’s events. The doomed, the preachers explained, were enemies of Christ. They were weeds among the righteous wheat. They had been given a chance to repent, but had refused that mercy and so must face their eternal fate.

‘Who are they anyway?’ Hook asked.

‘Lollards,’ Sir Edward said.

‘What’s a Lollard?’

‘A heretic, you piece of slime,’ Snoball said happily, ‘and the bastards were supposed to gather here and start a rebellion against our gracious king, but instead they’re going to hell.’

‘They don’t look like rebels,’ Hook said. Most of the prisoners were middle-aged, some were old, while a handful was very young. There were women and girls among them.

‘Doesn’t matter what they look like,’ Snoball said, ‘they’re heretics and they have to die.’

‘It’s God’s will,’ Sir Martin snarled.

‘But what makes them heretics?’ Hook asked.

‘Oh, we are curious today,’ Sir Martin said sourly.

‘I’d like to know that too,’ Michael said.

‘Because the church says they’re heretics,’ Sir Martin snapped, then appeared to relent of his tone. ‘Do you believe, Michael Hook, that when I raise the host it turns into the most holy and beloved and mystical flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ?’

‘Yes, father, of course!’

‘Well, they don’t believe that,’ the priest said, jerking his head at the Lollards kneeling in the mud, ‘they believe the bread stays bread, which makes them turds-for-brains piss-shits. And do you believe that our blessed father the Pope is God’s vicar on earth?’

‘Yes, father,’ Michael said.

‘Thank Christ for that, or else I’d have to burn you.’

‘I thought there were two popes?’ Snoball put in.

Sir Martin ignored that. ‘Ever seen a sinner burn, Michael Hook?’ he asked.

‘No, father.’

Sir Martin grinned lasciviously. ‘They scream, young Hook, like a boar being gelded. They do scream so!’ He turned suddenly and thrust a long bony finger into Nick Hook’s chest. ‘And you should listen to those screams, Nicholas Hook, for they are the liturgy of hell. And you,’ he prodded Hook’s chest again, ‘are hell-bound.’ The priest whirled around, arms suddenly outspread, so that he reminded Hook of a great dark-winged bird. ‘Avoid hell, boys!’ he called enthusiastically, ‘avoid it! No tits on Wednesdays and Fridays, and do God’s work diligently every day!’

More ropes had been slung from other signposts about the marketplace, and now soldiers roughly divided the prisoners into groups that were pushed towards the makeshift gallows. One man began shouting to his friends, telling them to have faith in God and that they would all meet in heaven before this day was over, and he went on shouting till a soldier in royal livery broke his jaw with a mail-shod fist. The broken-jawed man was one of the two selected for the fires and Hook, standing apart from his comrades, watched as the man was hoisted onto the stone-and gravel-filled barrel and tied to the stake. More firewood was piled around his feet.

‘Come on, Hook, don’t dream,’ Snoball grumbled.

The growing crowd was still sullen. There were a few folk who seemed pleased, but most watched resentfully, ignoring the priests who preached at them and turning their backs on a group of brown-robed monks who chanted a song of praise for the day’s happy events.

‘Hoist the old man up,’ Snoball said to Hook. ‘We’ve got ten to kill, so let’s get the work done!’

One of the empty handcarts that had brought the firewood was parked beneath the beam and Hook was needed to lift a man onto the cart’s bed. The other six prisoners, four men and two women, waited. One of the women clung to her husband, while the second had her back turned and was on her knees, praying. All four prisoners on the cart were men, one of them old enough to be Hook’s grandfather. ‘I forgive you, son,’ the old man said as Hook twisted the thick rope around his neck. ‘You’re an archer, aren’t you?’ the Lollard asked and still Hook did not answer. ‘I was on the hill at Homildon,’ Hook’s victim said, looking up at the grey clouds as Hook tightened the rope, ‘where I shot a bow for my king. I sent shaft after shaft, boy, deep into the Scots. I drew long and I loosed sharp, and God forgive me, but I was good that day.’ He looked into Hook’s eyes. ‘I was an archer.’

Hook held few things dear beyond his brother and whatever affection he felt for whichever girl was in his arms, yet archers were special. Archers were Hook’s heroes. England, for Hook, was not protected by men in shining armour, mounted on trapper-decked horses, but by archers. By ordinary men who built and ploughed and made, and who could draw the yew war bow and send an arrow two hundred paces to strike a mark the size of a man’s hand. So Hook looked into the old man’s eyes and he saw, not a heretic, but the pride and strength of an archer. He saw himself. He suddenly knew he would like this old man and that realisation checked his hands.

‘Nothing you can do about it, boy,’ the man said gently. ‘I fought for the old king and his son wants me dead, so draw the rope tight, boy, draw it tight. And when I’m gone, boy, do something for me.’

Hook gave the curtest of nods. It could either have been an acknowledgement that he had heard the request, or perhaps it was an agreement to do whatever favour the man might request.

‘You see the girl praying?’ the old man asked. ‘She’s my granddaughter. Sarah, she’s called, Sarah. Take her away for me. She doesn’t deserve heaven yet, so take her away. You’re young, boy, you’re strong, you can take her away for me.’

How? Hook thought, and he savagely pulled the rope’s bitter end so that the loop constricted about the old man’s neck, and then he jumped off the cart and half slipped in the mud. Snoball and Robert Perrill, who had tied the other nooses, were already off the cart.

‘Simple folk, they are,’ Sir Martin was saying, ‘just simple folk, but they think they know better than Mother Church, and so a lesson must be taught so that other simple folk don’t follow them into error. Have no pity for them, because it’s God’s mercy we’re administering! God’s unbounded mercy!’

God’s unbounded mercy was administered by pulling the cart sharply out from under the four men’s feet. They dropped slightly, then jerked and twisted. Hook watched the old man, seeing the broad barrel chest of an archer. The man was choking as his legs drew up, as they trembled and straightened then drew up again, but even in his dying agony he looked with bulging eyes at Hook as though expecting the younger man to snatch his Sarah out of the marketplace. ‘Do we wait for them to die,’ Will Snoball asked Sir Edward, ‘or pull on their ankles?’ Sir Edward seemed not to hear the question. He was distracted again, his eyes unfocused, though he appeared to be staring fixedly at the nearest man tied to the stake. A priest was haranguing the broken-jawed Lollard while a man-at-arms, his face deep shadowed by a helmet, held a flaming torch ready. ‘I’ll let them swing then, sir,’ Snoball said and still got no answer.

‘Oh my,’ Sir Martin appeared to wake up suddenly and his voice was reverent, the same tone he used in the parish church when he said the mass, ‘oh my, oh my, oh my. Oh my, just look at that little beauty.’ The priest was gazing at Sarah, who had risen from her knees and was staring with a horrified expression at her grandfather’s struggles. ‘Oh my, God is good,’ the priest said reverently.

Nicholas Hook had often wondered what angels looked like. There was a painting of angels on the wall of the village church, but it was a clumsy picture because the angels had blobs for faces and their robes and wings had become yellowed and streaked by the damp that seeped through the nave’s plaster, yet nevertheless Hook understood that angels were creatures of unearthly beauty. He thought their wings must be like a heron’s wings, only much larger, and made of feathers that would shine like the sun glowing through the morning mist. He suspected angels had golden hair and long, very clean robes of the whitest linen. He knew they were special creatures, holy beings, but in his dreams they were also beautiful girls that could haunt a boy’s thoughts. They were loveliness on gleaming wings, they were angels.

And this Lollard girl was as beautiful as Hook’s imagined angels. She had no wings, of course, and her smock was muddied and her face was distorted into a rictus by the horror she watched and by the knowledge that she too must hang, but she was still lovely. She was blue-eyed and fair-haired, had high cheekbones and a skin untouched by the pox. She was a girl to haunt a boy’s dreams, or a priest’s thoughts for that matter. ‘See that gate, Michael Hook?’ Sir Martin asked flatly. The priest had looked for the Perrill brothers to do his bidding, but they were out of earshot and so he chose the nearest archer. ‘Take her through the gate and keep her in the stable there.’

Nick Hook’s younger brother looked puzzled. ‘Take her?’ he asked.

‘Not take her! Not you, you cloth-brained shit-puddling idiot! Just take that girl to the tavern stables! I want to pray with her.’

‘Oh! You want to pray!’ Michael said, smiling.

‘You want to pray with her, father?’ Snoball asked with a snide chuckle.

‘If she repents,’ Sir Martin said piously, ‘she can live.’ The priest was shivering and Hook did not think it was the cold. ‘Christ in His loving mercy allows that,’ Sir Martin said, his eyes darting from the girl to Snoball, ‘so let us see if we can make her repent? Sir Edward?’

‘Father?’

‘I shall pray with the girl!’ Sir Martin called, and Sir Edward did not answer. He was still gazing at the nearest unlit pyre where the Lollard leader was ignoring the priest’s words and looking up at the sky.

‘Take her, young Hook,’ Sir Martin ordered.

Nick Hook watched his brother take the girl’s elbow. Michael was almost as strong as Nick, yet he had a gentleness and a sincerity that reached past the girl’s terror. ‘Come on, lass,’ he said softly, ‘the good father wants to pray with you. So let me take you. No one’s going to hurt you.’

Snoball sniggered as Michael led the unresisting girl through the yard gate and into the stable where the archers’ horses were tethered. The space was cold, dusty and smelt of straw and dung. Nick Hook followed the pair. He told himself he followed so he could protect his brother, but in truth he had been prompted by the dying archer’s words, and when he reached the stable door he looked up to see a window in the far gable and suddenly, out of nowhere, a voice sounded in his head. ‘Take her away,’ the voice said. It was a man’s voice, but not one that Nick Hook recognised. ‘Take her away,’ the voice said again, ‘and heaven will be yours.’

‘Heaven?’ Nick Hook said aloud.

‘Nick?’ Michael, still holding the girl’s elbow, turned to his elder brother, but Nick Hook was gazing at that high bright window.

‘Just save the girl,’ the voice said, and there was no one in the stable except the brothers and Sarah, but the voice was real, and Hook was shaking. If he could just save the girl. If he could take her away. He had never felt anything like this before. He had always thought himself cursed, hated even by his own name-saint, but suddenly he knew that if he could save this girl then God would love him and God would forgive whatever had made Saint Nicholas hate him. Hook was being offered salvation. It was there, beyond the window, and it promised him a new life. No more of being the cursed Nick Hook. He knew it, yet he did not know how to take it.

‘What in God’s name are you doing here?’ Sir Martin snarled at Hook.

He did not answer. He was staring at the clouds beyond the window. His horse, a grey, stirred and thumped a hoof. Whose voice had he heard?

Sir Martin pushed past Nick Hook to stare at the girl. The priest smiled. ‘Hello, little lady,’ he said, his voice hoarse, then he turned to Michael. ‘Strip her,’ he ordered curtly.

‘Strip her?’ Michael asked, frowning.

‘She must appear naked before her God,’ the priest explained, ‘so our Lord and Saviour can judge her as she truly is. In nakedness is truth. That’s what the scripture says, in nakedness is our truth.’ Nowhere did the scriptures say that, but Sir Martin had often found the invented quote useful.

‘But …’ Michael was still frowning. Nick’s younger brother was notoriously slow in understanding, but even he knew that something was wrong in the winter stable.

‘Do it!’ the priest snarled at him.

‘It’s not right,’ Michael said stubbornly.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ Sir Martin said angrily and he pushed Michael out of the way and grabbed the girl’s collar. She gave a short, desperate yelp that was not quite a scream, and she tried to pull away. Michael was just watching, horrified, but the echo of a mysterious voice and a vision of heaven were still in Nick Hook’s head and so he stepped one quick pace forward and drove his fist into the priest’s belly with such strength that Sir Martin folded over with a sound of half pain and half surprise.

‘Nick!’ Michael said, aghast at what his brother had done.

Hook had taken the girl’s elbow and half turned towards that far window. ‘Help!’ Sir Martin shouted, his voice rasping from breathlessness and pain, ‘help!’ Hook turned back to silence him, but Michael stepped between him and the priest.

‘Nick!’ Michael said again, and just then both the Perrill brothers came running.

‘He hit me!’ Father Martin said, sounding astonished. Tom Perrill grinned, while his younger brother Robert looked as confused as Michael. ‘Hold him!’ the priest demanded, straightening with a look of pain on his long face, ‘just hold the bastard!’ His voice was a half-strangled croak as he struggled for breath. ‘Take him outside!’ he panted, ‘and hold him.’

Hook let himself be led into the stable yard. His brother followed and stood unhappily staring at the hanged men just beyond the open gate where a thin cold rain had begun to slant across the sky. Nick Hook was suddenly drained. He had hit a priest, a well-born priest, a man of the gentry, Lord Slayton’s own kin. The Perrill brothers were mocking him, but Hook did not hear their words, instead he heard Sarah’s smock being torn and heard her scream and heard the scream stifled and he heard the rustling of straw and he heard Sir Martin grunting and Sarah whimpering, and Hook gazed at the low clouds and at the woodsmoke that lay over the city as thick as any cloud and he knew that he was failing God. All his life Nick Hook had been told he was cursed and then, in a place of death, God had asked him to do just one thing and he had failed. He heard a great sigh go up from the marketplace and he guessed that one of the fires had been lit to usher a heretic down to the greater fires of hell, and he feared he would be going to hell himself because he had done nothing to rescue a blue-eyed angel from a black-souled priest, but then he told himself the girl was a heretic and he wondered if it had been the devil who spoke in his head. The girl was gasping now, and the gasps turned to sobs and Hook raised his face to the wind and the spitting rain.

Sir Martin, grinning like a fed stoat, came out of the stable. He had tucked his robe high about his waist, but now let it fall. ‘There,’ he said, ‘that didn’t take long. You want her, Tom?’ he spoke to the older Perrill brother, ‘she’s yours if you want her. Juicy little thing she is, too! Just slit her throat when you’re done.’

‘Not hang her, father?’ Tom Perrill asked.

‘Just kill the bitch,’ the priest said. ‘I’d do it myself, but the church doesn’t kill people. We hand them over to the lay power, and that’s you, Tom. So go and hump the heretic bitch then open her throat. And you, Robert, you hold Hook. Michael, go away! You’ve nothing to do with this, go!’

Michael hesitated. ‘Go,’ Nick Hook told his brother wearily, ‘just go.’

Robert Perrill held Hook’s arms behind his back. Hook could have pulled away easily enough, but he was still shaken by the voice he had heard and by his stupidity in striking Sir Martin. That was a hanging offence, yet Sir Martin wanted more than just his death and, as Robert Perrill held Hook, Sir Martin began hitting him. The priest was not strong, he did not have the great muscles of an archer, but he possessed spite and he had sharp bony knuckles that he drove viciously into Hook’s face. ‘You piece of bitch-spawned shit,’ Sir Martin spat, and hit again, trying to pulp Hook’s eyes. ‘You’re a dead man, Hook,’ the priest shouted. ‘I’ll have you looking like that!’ Sir Martin pointed at the nearest fire. Smoke was thick around the stake, but flames were bright at the pile’s base and, through the grey smoke, a figure could be seen straining like a bent bow. ‘You bastard!’ Sir Martin said, hitting Hook again, ‘your mother was an open-legged whore and she shat you like the whore she was.’ He hit Hook again and then a flare of fire streaked in the pyre’s smoke and a scream sounded in the marketplace like the squeal of a boar being gelded.

‘What in God’s name is happening?’ Sir Edward had heard the priest’s anger and had come into the stable yard to discover its cause.

The priest shuddered. His knuckles were bloody. He had managed to cut Hook’s lips and start blood from Hook’s nose, but little else. His eyes were wide open, full of anger and indignation, but Hook thought he saw the devil-madness deep inside them. ‘Hook hit me,’ Sir Martin explained, ‘and he’s to be killed.’

Sir Edward looked from the snarling priest to the bloodied archer. ‘That’s for Lord Slayton to decide,’ Sir Edward said.

‘Then he’ll decide to hang him, won’t he?’ Sir Martin snapped.