And he was happy that Melisande was one of the women chosen to ride with the company. She had a small, fine-boned mare that belonged to Sir John’s wife, the sister of the late king, and she rode it well. “We must take women with us,” Sir John had explained.
“God is merciful,” Father Christopher had murmured.
“We can’t wash our own clothes!” Sir John had said. “We can’t sew! We can’t cook! We must have women! Useful things, women. We don’t want to be like the French! Humping each other when a sheep isn’t available, so we’ll take women!” He liked Melisande to ride alongside him and chatted away to her in French, making her laugh.
“He does not really hate the French,” Melisande told Hook on the evening that they arrived near a town with a large abbey. The abbey bell was summoning the faithful to prayer, but Hook did not move. He and Melisande were sitting beside a small river that flowed placidly through lush water meadows. Across the river, two fields away, another company of men-at-arms and archers was making camp. The fires of Sir John’s men were already burning, hazing the trees and the distant abbey tower with smoke. “He just likes to be rude about the French,” Melisande said.
“About everyone.”
“He is kind inside,” Melisande said, then leaned back to rest her head on his chest. When standing she barely reached his shoulder. Hook loved the fragility of her looks, though he knew that apparent frailty was deceptive for he had learned that Melisande had the supple strength of a bowstave and, like a bow that had followed the string and so been bent into a permanent curve even when unstrung, she possessed fiercely held opinions. He loved that in her. He also feared for her.
“Maybe you shouldn’t come,” Hook said.
“Why? Because it is dangerous?”
“Yes.”
Melisande shrugged. “It is safer to be French in France than to be English, I think. If they capture Alice or Matilda then they will be raped.” Alice and Matilda were her particular friends.
“And you won’t be?” Hook asked.
Melisande said nothing for a while, perhaps thinking of Soissons. “I want to come,” she finally said.
“Why?”
“To be with you,” she said, as though the answer were obvious. “What’s a centenar?”
“Like Peter Goddington? Just a man who leads archers.”
“And a ventenar?”
“Well, a centenar leads a whole lot of archers, maybe a hundred? And a ventenar is in charge of perhaps twenty of them. They’re all sergeants.”
Melisande thought about that for a few seconds. “You should be a ventenar, Nick.”
Hook smiled, but said nothing. The river was crystal clear as it flowed over a sandy bed where water crowsfoot and cress waved languidly. Mayflies were dancing and, every now and then, a splash betrayed a feeding trout. Two swans and four cygnets swam beside the far bank and, as Hook watched them, he saw a shadow stir in the water beneath. “Don’t move,” he warned Melisande and, moving very slowly, took the cased bow from his shoulder.
“Sir John knows my father,” Melisande said suddenly.
“He does?” Hook asked, surprised. He unlaced the leather case and gently slid the bow free.
“Ghillebert,” Melisande said the name slowly, as if it was unfamiliar, “the Seigneur de Lanferelle.”
Father Michel, in France, had said Melisande’s father was the Seigneur d’Enfer, but Hook supposed he had misheard. “He’s a lord, eh?” he remarked.
“Lords have many children,” Melisande said, “et je suis une bâtarde.”
Hook said nothing. He braced the bowstave against the bole of an ash tree and bent the yew to loop the string over the upper nock.
“I am a bastard,” Melisande said bitterly. “That is why he put me in the nunnery.”
“To hide you.”
“And protect me, I think,” Melisande said. “He paid money to the abbess. He paid for my food and bed. He said I would be safe there.”
“Safe to be a servant girl?”
“My mother was a servant girl. Why not me? And I would have become a nun one day.”
“You’re not a servant girl,” Hook said, “you’re a lord’s daughter.” He took an arrow from his bag, choosing a bodkin with its long, sharp, and heavy head. He was holding the bow horizontally on his lap and now laid the arrow on the stave and notched the feathered end on the string. The shadow stirred. “How well do you know your father?” Hook asked.
“I have only met him twice,” Melisande said. “Once when I was small, and I do not remember that well, and then before I went to the nunnery. I liked him.” She paused, searching for the right English words. “In the beginning, I liked him.”
“Did he like you?” Hook asked carelessly, concentrating on the shadow rather than on Melisande. He was drawing the bow now, still holding it horizontally and unwilling to raise it vertically in case the movement sent the shadow fast upstream.
“He was so,” she paused, looking for the word, “beau. He was tall. And he has a beautiful badge. He wears a great yellow sun with golden rays. And on the sun there is the head of…”
“An eagle,” Hook interrupted.
“Un faucon,” Melisande said.
“A falcon then,” Hook said, and remembered the long-haired man who had watched the archers being murdered in front of the church of Saint Antoine-le-Petit. “He was in Soissons,” he said harshly. He had paused with the bow partially drawn. The shadow drifted in the water and Hook thought it would vanish downstream, then it flicked its tail and was back under the far bank.
Melisande was staring up at Hook. “He was there?”
“Long black hair,” Hook said.
“I did not see him!”
“You had your head buried in my shoulder most of the time,” Hook said. “You didn’t want to look. They were torturing men. Taking their eyes. Cutting them.”
Melisande was silent a long time. Hook raised the bow slightly, then she spoke again, but in a smaller voice. “My father is called something else,” she said, “le Seigneur d’Enfer.”
“That’s the name I heard,” Hook said.
“Le Seigneur d’Enfer,” Melisande said again. “The lord of hell. It is because Lanferelle sounds like l’enfer, and l’enfer is hell, but maybe because he is so fierce in a fight. He has sent many men to hell, I think. And some to heaven too.”
Swallows flickered fast over the river and, from the corner of his eye, Hook saw the brilliant blue flash of a kingfisher’s flight. The shadow was unmoving again. He drew the cord further back, unable to pull it to the full extent because Melisande’s slender body obstructed him, but even at half draw the great war bow was a dreadful weapon.