Now the painted town was a battered heap of stones, mud, smoke, and shattered houses. Long stretches of the walls still stood and still flaunted their derisive banners that displayed the badges of the garrison’s leaders, images of the saints and invocations to God, but eight of the towers had been collapsed into the town ditch, and one long length of rampart had been beaten into wreckage close to the Leure Gate. The great missiles lobbed into the town by the catapults smashed houses and started fires so that a pall of smoke hung constantly above the besieged town. A church steeple had fallen, taking its bells in a mighty cacophony, and still the boulders and gun-stones hammered at the already hammered town.
And still the defenders fought back. Each dawn Hook led men into the pits that defended the English guns and in every dawn he saw where the garrison had been working. They were making a new wall behind the broken rampart and they shored up the collapsing barbican with new timbers. English heralds, holding their white wands and gaudy in their colored coats, rode to the enemy walls to offer terms, but the enemy commanders rebuffed the heralds each time. “What they’re hoping,” Father Christopher told Hook one early September morning, “is that their king will lead an army to their rescue.”
“I thought the French king was mad?”
“Oh, so he is! He believes he is made of glass!” Father Christopher said mockingly. The priest visited the trenches every morning, offering blessings and jests to the archers. “It’s true! He thinks he’s made of glass and will shatter if he falls. He also chews rugs and tells his troubles to the moon.”
“So he won’t be leading any army here, father,” Hook said, smiling.
“But the mad king has sons, Hook, and they’re all blood-thirsty little scum. Any one of them would love to grind our bones to powder.”
“Will they try?”
“God knows, Hook, God alone knows and He isn’t telling me. But I do know there’s an army gathering at Rouen.”
“Is that far?”
“See that road?” The priest pointed to the faint remains of a road that had once led from the Leure Gate, but which was now only a scar in a muddy, missile-battered landscape. “Follow that,” Father Christopher said, “and turn right when it reaches the hill and keep going, and after fifty miles you’ll find a great bridge and a huge city. That’s Rouen, Hook. Fifty miles? An army can march that in three days!”
“So they come,” Hook said, “and we’ll kill them.”
“King Harold said much the same just before Hastings,” Father Christopher said gently.
“Did Harold have archers?” Hook asked.
“Just men-at-arms, I think.”
“Well, then,” Hook said and grinned.
The priest raised his head to peer at Harfleur. “We should have captured the place by now,” he said wistfully. “It’s taking much too long.” He turned because a passing man-at-arms had greeted him cheerfully. Father Christopher returned the greeting and made a sketchy sign of blessing toward the hurrying man. “You know who that was, Hook?”
Hook looked at the retreating figure who wore a bright surcoat of red and white. “No, father, no idea.”
“Geoffrey Chaucer’s son,” the priest said proudly.
“Who?”
“You’ve not heard of Geoffrey Chaucer?” Father Christopher asked. “The poet?”
“Oh, I thought he might be someone useful,” Hook said, then slammed a hand onto the priest’s shoulder and so forced him to crouch. A heartbeat later a crossbow bolt slapped into the muddy back of the trench where Father Christopher had been standing. “That’s Catface,” Hook explained, “he’s useful.”
“Catface?”
“A bastard on the barbican, father. He’s got a face like a polecat. I can see him raise his bow.”
“You can’t shoot him?”
“Twenty paces too far off, father,” Hook said, and peered between two battered wicker baskets filled with disintegrating earth that formed the parapet. He waved, and a figure on the bastion waved back. “I always let him know I’m still living.”
“Polecat,” Father Christopher said musingly. “You know Rob Pole is ill?”
“So’s Fletch. And Dick Godewyne’s wife.”
“Alice? Is she sick too?”
“Horrible, I hear.”
“Rob Pole can’t stop shitting,” the priest said, “and nothing but blood and mucky water comes out.”
“God help us,” Hook said, “Fletch is the same.”
“I’d better start praying,” Father Christopher said earnestly, “we can’t lose men to sickness. Are you feeling well?”
“I am.”
“God be praised for that. And your hand? How’s your hand?”
“It throbs, father,” Hook said, holding up his right hand, which was still bandaged. Melisande had covered the wound with honey, then wrapped it.
“Throbbing is a good sign,” the priest said. He leaned forward and sniffed at the bandage, “and it smells good! Well, it stinks of mud, sweat, and shit, but so do we all. It doesn’t smell rotten, and that’s the important thing. How’s your piss? Is it cloudy? Strong-colored? Feeble?”
“Just normal, father.”
“That’s grand, Hook. We can’t lose you!”
And strange to tell, Hook thought, but he reckoned the priest was telling the truth because he knew he was doing his ventenar’s job well. He had expected to be embarrassed by the small authority, and had feared that some of the older men would deliberately ignore his orders, but if there was any resentment it was muted and his commands were obeyed readily enough. He wore the silver chain with pride.
The weather had turned hot again, baking the mud into a crust that crumbled into fine dust with every footstep. Harfleur crumbled too, yet still the garrison defied the besiegers. The king would come to the archers’ pits four or five times a day and stare at the ramparts. At the beginning of the siege he had chatted with the archers, but now his face was drawn and his lips thin and the archers gave him and his small entourage space. They watched him stare and they could read from his scarred face that he did not think an assault could break through the new inner walls. Any such attack would have to stumble over the ruins of the burned houses, suffer the bolts spitting from the barbican, then cross the great town ditch before climbing the wreckage of the gun-shattered wall and all the time the crossbow bolts would slash in from the flanks, and once across the wall’s ruins the attackers would be faced with the new inner wall that was made from thick baskets of earth, and from balks of timber and stones fetched from the fallen buildings inside the town. “We need another length of wall down,” Hook overheard the king say, “and then we attack instantly into the new breach.”
“Can’t be done, sire,” Sir John Cornewaille said grimly. “This is the only dry approach we’ve got.” The flood waters had receded, but they still ringed much of the town, restricting the English attacks to the two places where the mine shafts were being hacked toward the town.
“Then bring down the barbican,” the king insisted, “and beat the gate beyond into splinters.” He stared, long-nosed and grim-faced, at the stubborn barbican, then suddenly became aware of the anxious archers and men-at-arms watching him. “God didn’t bring us this far to fail!” he shouted confidently. “The town will be ours, fellows, and soon! There will be ale and good food! It will all be ours soon!”
All day the chalk and soil was dragged from the mine shaft while the timbers, cut to a bowstave’s length, were carried inside to support the tunnel. The guns kept up their fire, shrouding the besiegers’ lines with smoke, punching their eardrums with noise, and pounding the already pounded defenses.
“How are your ears?” Sir John greeted Hook on an early September morning.
“My ears, Sir John?”
“Those ugly things on the sides of your head.”
“Nothing wrong with them, Sir John.”
“Then come with me.”
Sir John, his fine armor and surcoat covered in dust, led Hook back through a trench and so to the mine’s entrance beneath the sow. The shaft sloped sharply down for fifteen paces, then the tunnel leveled. It was two paces wide and as high as a bowstave. Rushlights burned from small brackets nailed to the timber supports, but as Hook followed Sir John he noted how the small flames grew feebler the deeper they went. Every few paces Sir John stopped and flattened himself against the tunnel’s side and Hook did the same to let some miner pass with a load of excavated chalk. Dust hung in the air, while the floor was a slurry of water and chalk dust. “All right, boys,” Sir John said when he reached the tunnel’s end, “time to rest. Everyone stay still and silent!”