“Melisande won’t approve,” Hook said, “she likes being clean.”
“Warn her!” Father Christopher said seriously, “the physicians all agree, Hook, that washing weakens the skin. It lets in disease!”
Then, when the pits were dug, Hook and a hundred other archers rode north up the valley of the River Lézarde and dug again, this time making a great dam across the valley. They demolished a dozen half-timbered houses in a village and used the beams to strengthen the huge earthen bank that stopped up the river. The Lézarde was small and the summer had been dry, but it still took four days of hard digging to make a barrier high enough to divert most of the river water westward. By the time Hook and his companions went back to Harfleur the flood waters had partly subsided, though the ground about the town was still waterlogged and the river itself still spilled over its banks to make a wide lake north of the town.
Next they dug pits for guns. Two cannon, one called Londoner because the citizens of London had paid for it, were already in place and their gun-stones were biting at the huge bastion the defenders had built outside the Leure Gate. The Duke of Clarence, who was the king’s brother, had marched clear around the town and his forces, which were a third of the English army, were attacking Harfleur’s eastern side. They had their own guns that had been fortuitously captured from a supply convoy making for Harfleur. The Dutch gunners, hired to defend Harfleur from its English enemies, happily took English coin and turned their cannon against the town’s defenders. Harfleur was surrounded now. No more reinforcements could reach the town unless they fought their way past the English army or sailed past the fleet of royal warships that guarded the harbor entrance.
On the day that the gun-pits were finished Hook and forty other archers climbed the hill to the west of the encampment, following the road by which the army had approached Harfleur. Huge oaks lined the nearest crest, and they were ordered to fell those trees and lop off the straightest limbs, which were to be sawn to the length of a bowstave and loaded onto wagons. The day was hot. A half-dozen archers stayed by the road with the huge two-handled saws while the rest spread along the crest. Peter Goddington marked the trees he wanted felled, and assigned a pair of archers to each. Hook and Will of the Dale were almost the farthest south, with only the Scarlet twins closer to the sea. Melisande was with Hook. Her hands were raw from washing clothes and there were still more clothes to be boiled and scrubbed back in the encampment, but Sir John’s steward had let her accompany Hook. She carried the small crossbow on her back and never left Sir John’s company without the weapon. “I will shoot that priest if he touches me,” she had told Hook, “and I’ll shoot his friends.” Hook had nodded, but said nothing. She might, he thought, shoot one of them, but the weapon took so long to reload that she had no chance of defending herself against more than one man.
The trees muffled the occasional sound of a cannon firing and dulled the crash of the gun-stones striking home on Harfleur’s walls. The axes were loud. “Why did we come so far from the camp?” Melisande asked.
“Because we’ve chopped down all the big trees that are closer,” Hook said. He was stripped to the waist, his huge muscles driving the ax deep into an oak’s trunk so that the chips flew.
“And we’re not that far away from the camp,” Will of the Dale added. He was standing back, letting Hook do the work and Hook did not mind. He was used to wielding a forester’s ax.
Melisande spanned the crossbow. She found it hard work, but she would not let Hook or Will help her crank the twin handles. She was sweating by the time the pawl clicked to hold the cord under its full tension. She laid a bolt in the groove, then aimed at a tree no more than ten paces away. She frowned, bit her lower lip, then pulled the trigger and watched as the bolt flew a yard wide to skitter through the undergrowth beyond. “Don’t laugh,” she said before either man had any chance to laugh.
“I’m not laughing,” Hook said, grinning at Will.
“I wouldn’t dare,” Will said.
“I will learn,” Melisande said.
“You’ll learn better if you keep your eyes open,” Hook said.
“It’s hard,” she said.
“Look down the arrow,” Will advised her, “hold the bow firm and pull the trigger nice and slowly. And may God bless you when you shoot,” he added the last words in Father Christopher’s sly voice.
She nodded, then cranked the bow again. It took a long time before it clicked, then instead of shooting it she laid the weapon on the leaf mold and just watched Hook and she thought how he made felling a great oak look easy, just as he made shooting a bow seem simple.
“I’ll see if the twins need help,” Will of the Dale said, “because you don’t, Nick.”
“I don’t,” Hook agreed, “so go and help them. They’re fuller’s sons which means they’ve never done a proper day’s work in their lives.”
Will picked up his ax, his arrow bag, and his cased bow and disappeared among the southern trees. Melisande watched him go, then looked down at the cocked crossbow as though she had never seen such a thing before. “Father Christopher was talking to me,” she said quietly.
“Was he?” Hook asked. He looked up at the tree, then back to the cut he had made. “This great thing will fall in a minute,” he warned her. He went to the back side of the trunk and buried the ax in the wood. He wrenched the blade free. “So what did Father Christopher want?”
“He wanted to know if we would marry.”
“Us? Marry?” The ax chopped again and a wedge of wood came away when Hook pulled the blade back. Any moment now, he thought. He could sense the tension in the oak, the silent tearing of the timber that preceded the tree’s death. He stepped away to stand beside Melisande who was well clear of the trunk. He noticed the crossbow was still cocked and almost told her that she would weaken the weapon by leaving the shank stressed, but then decided that might not be a bad thing. A weakened shank would make it easier for her to span. “Marry?” he asked again.
“That’s what he said.”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t know,” she said, staring at the ground, “maybe?”
“Maybe,” Hook echoed her, and just then the timber cracked and ripped and the huge oak fell, slowly at first, then faster as it crashed through leaves and branches to shudder down. Birds shrieked. For a moment the woods were full of alarm, then all that was left was the ringing sound of the other axes along the ridge. “I think, maybe,” Hook said slowly, “that it’s a good idea.”
“You do?”
He nodded. “I do.”
She looked at him, said nothing for a while, then picked up the crossbow. “I look down the arrow,” she said, “and hold the bow tight?”
“And you squeeze gently,” he said. “Hold your breath while you squeeze, and don’t look at the bolt, just look at the place where you want the bolt to go.”
She nodded, laid a bolt in the groove, and aimed at the same tree she had missed before. It was a couple of paces closer now. Hook watched her, saw the concentration on her face and saw her flinch in anticipation of the weapon’s kick. She held her breath, closed her eyes and pulled the trigger and the bolt flashed past the tree’s edge and vanished down the gentle farther slope. Melisande stared forlorn at where it had gone.
“You haven’t got that many bolts,” Hook said, “and those are special.”
“Special?”
“They’re smaller than most,” he said, “they’re made specially to fit that bow.”
“I should find the ones I shot?”
He grinned. “I’ll chop off a couple of these boughs, and you should find those two bolts.”
“I have nine left.”
“Eleven would be better.”
She laid the crossbow on the ground and picked her way down the slope to vanish in the sunlit green of the undergrowth. Hook cocked the crossbow, winding the cord back easily, hoping that the continual stress would weaken the stave and so help Melisande, then he went back to lopping branches. He wondered why the king had demanded so many pieces of straight timber the height of a bowstave. Not his business, he decided. He made short work of a second branch, then a third. The great trunk would be sawn eventually, but for the moment he would leave it where it had fallen. He lopped off more of the smaller branches, and heard the long collapse of another tree somewhere along the ridge. Pigeons clattered through the leaves. He thought he might have to go and help Melisande find the bolts because she had been gone far too long, but just as he had that thought she came running back, her face alarmed and her eyes wide. She pointed down the westward slope. “There are men!” she said.