“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 église?” he asked the monk.
“Un monastère,” 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?”
“Hit him, Sir John?” Hook asked, playing dumb while he thought what answer would serve him best.
“The prior says you hit him,” Sir John said accusingly.
Hook’s instinct was to lie, just as he had always lied when faced with such accusations, but he did not want to sour his service to Sir John with untruths so he nodded. “I did, Sir John,” he said.
Sir John’s face showed a hint of a smile. “That’s a pity, Hook. Our king has said he’ll hang any man who hurts a priest, a nun, or a monk. He’s very pious is our Henry, so I want you to think very carefully about your answer. Did you hit him, Hook?”
“Oh no, Sir John,” Hook said. “I wouldn’t dream of doing that.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” Sir John said, “he just tumbled out of his saddle, didn’t he? And he fell right onto his nose.” He blandly offered that explanation to the prior before pushing the bloody-nosed monk toward his brethren. “Archers,” Sir John said, turning to his men, “I want you all on the skyline, there,” he pointed eastward, “and stay on the road. I’ll take the horse, Hook.”
The archers waited on the road, which fell away in front of them before rising to another tree-covered crest. The stars were fading as the dawn smeared the east. Peter Goddington gave permission for some men to sleep as others kept watch and Hook made a bed on a mossy bank and must have slept an hour before more hoofbeats woke him. It was full light now and the sun was streaming through green leaves. A dozen horsemen were on the road, one of them Sir John Cornewaille. The horses were shivering and skittish and Hook guessed they had just been swum ashore and were still uncertain of their footing. “On to the next ridge!” Sir John shouted at the archers and Hook hastily picked up his arrow bag and cased bow. He followed the archers eastward, and the men-at-arms, in no apparent hurry, walked their horses behind.
The view from the farther ridge was astonishing. To Hook’s right the sea narrowed toward the Seine’s mouth. The river’s southern bank was all low wooded hills. To the north were more hills, but in front of Hook, glinting under the morning sun, the road fell away through woods and fields to a town and its harbor. The harbor was small, crammed with ships, and protected by the town walls that were built clear around the port, leaving only a narrow entrance leading to a slender channel that twisted to the sea. Behind the port was the town itself, all roofs and churches ringed by a great stone wall that was obscured in places by houses that had been built outside its perimeter. The houses, which spread out on all sides of the town, could not hide the great towers that studded the wall. Hook counted the towers. Twenty-four. Banners hung from the towers and from the walls in between. The archers were much too far away to see the flags, but the message of the banners was obvious: the town knew the English had landed and was proclaiming its defiance.
“Harfleur,” Sir John Cornewaille announced to the archers. “A nest of goddamned pirates! They’re villains who live there, boys! They raid our shipping, raid our coast, and we’re going to scour them out of that town like rats out of a granary!”
Hook could see more now. He could see a river looping through fields to Harfleur’s north. The river evidently ran clear through the town, entering under a great arch and flowing through the houses to empty itself in the walled harbor. But the citizens of Harfleur, warned the previous day of the coming of the English, must have dammed the archway so that the river was now flooding to spread a great lake about the town’s northern and western sides. Harfleur, under that morning sun, looked like a walled island.
A crossbow bolt seared overhead. Hook had seen the flicker of its first appearance, down and to his left, meaning that whoever had shot the bolt was in the woods north of the road. The bolt landed somewhere in the trees behind.
“Someone doesn’t like us,” one of the mounted men-at-arms said lightly.
“Anyone see where it came from?” another rider demanded sharply.
Hook and a half-dozen other archers all pointed to the same patch of dense trees and undergrowth. The road dropped in front of them, then ran level for a hundred paces to the lip of a shelf before falling again toward the flood-besieged town, and the crossbowman was somewhere on that wide wooded ledge.
“I don’t suppose he’ll go away,” Sir John Cornewaille remarked mildly.
“There may be more than one?” someone else suggested.
“Just one, I think,” Sir John said. “Hook? You want to fetch the wretched man for me?”
Hook ran to his left, plunged into the trees, then turned down the short slope. He reached the wide ledge and there went more slowly, picking his way carefully to keep from making a noise. He had strung his bow. In thick trees the bow was a dubious weapon, but he did not want to encounter a crossbowman without having an arrow on the string.
The wood was oak, ash, and a few maples. The undergrowth was hawthorn and holly, and there was mistletoe growing high in the oaks, something Hook noted for he rarely saw it sprouting from oak in England. His grandmother had valued oak mistletoe, using it in a score of medicines she had made for the villagers, and even for Lord Slayton when the ague struck him. Her chief use for the mistletoe had been the treatment of barren women for which she had pounded the small berries with mangrove root, the whole moistened with the urine of a mother. There had been a fecund woman in the village, Mary Carter, who had given birth to fifteen healthy children, and Hook had often been sent with a pot to request her urine, and once he had been beaten by his grandmother for coming back with the pot empty because she had refused to believe that Mary Carter was away from home. The next time Hook had pissed in the pot himself and his grandmother had never noticed the difference.