“You’re not going to die,” the saint said impatiently, “not if you dig.”
So Hook pushed upward, scrabbling at the earth with both hands, and the soil caved in, filling his mouth and he wanted to scream, but he could not scream, and he pushed with his legs, using all the strength in his body, and the earth collapsed around him and he was certain he would die here, except that suddenly, quite suddenly, he was breathing clean air. His grave had been very shallow, nothing but a shroud of fallen soil and he was half standing in open air and was astonished to discover that full night had not yet fallen. It seemed to be raining, except the sky was clear, and then he realized the French were shooting crossbow bolts from the barbican and from the half-wrecked walls. They were not shooting at him, but at men peering from the English trenches and around the edges of the sow.
Hook was up to his waist in earth. He reached down beside his right leg and took hold of Robert Perrill’s leather jerkin. He pulled, and the earth was loose enough to let him drag the choking archer up into the last of the daylight. A crossbow bolt thumped into the soil a few inches from Hook and he went very still.
He was in what looked like a crude trench and the high sides of the trench gave him some protection from the French bolts. The town’s defenders were cheering. They had seen the tunnel’s collapse and they saw the English trying to rescue anyone who might have survived the catastrophe and so they were filling the twilight with crossbow bolts to drive those rescuers back.
“Oh, God,” Robert Perrill sighed.
“You’re alive,” Hook said.
“Nick?”
“We have to wait,” Hook said.
Robert Perrill choked and spat out earth. “Wait?”
“Can’t move till dark,” Hook said, “they’re shooting at us.”
“My brother!”
“He ran away,” Hook said. He wondered what had happened to Sir Edward. Had that deeper part of the mine collapsed? Or had the French killed all the men in the tunnel? The enemy had driven their own shaft above the English excavation and then dropped into the tunnel and Hook imagined the sudden fight, the death in the darkness, and the pain of dying in the ready-made grave. “You were going to kill me,” he said to Robert Perrill.
Perrill said nothing. He was half lying on the trench floor, but his legs were still buried. He had lost his sword.
“You were going to kill me,” Hook said again.
“My brother was.”
“You held the sword,” Hook said.
Perrill wiped dirt from his face. “I’m sorry, Nick,” he said.
Hook snorted, said nothing.
“Sir Martin said he’d pay us,” Perrill admitted.
“Your father?” Hook sneered.
Perrill hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”
“Because he hates me?”
“Your mother rejected him,” Perrill said.
Hook laughed. “And your mother whored herself,” he said flatly.
“He told her she’d go to heaven,” Perrill said, “that if you do it with a priest you go to heaven. That’s what he said.”
“He’s mad,” Hook said flatly, “moon-touched mad.”
Perrill ignored that. “He gave her money, he still does, and he’ll give us money.”
“To kill me?” Hook asked, though the French were trying hard enough to save Sir Martin the trouble. The crossbow bolts were thudding and spitting, some tumbling end over end down the crude trench made by the collapsed tunnel.
“He wants your woman,” Robert Perrill said.
“How much is he paying you?”
“A mark each,” Perrill said, eager to help Hook now.
A mark. One hundred and sixty pennies, or three hundred and twenty pence if both brothers were paid. Fifty-three days’ pay for an archer. The price of Hook’s life and Melisande’s misery. “So you have to kill me?” Hook asked, “then take my girl?”
“He wants that.”
“He’s an evil mad bastard,” Hook said.
“He can be kind,” Perrill said pathetically. “Do you remember John Luttock’s daughter?”
“Of course I remember her.”
“He took her away, but he paid John in the end, gave him the girl’s dowry.”
“A hundred and sixty pennies for raping her?”
“No!” Perrill was puzzled by the question. “I think it was two pounds, might have been more. John was happy.”
The light was fading fast now. The French had saved their loaded guns for the moment when their counter-mine pierced the English tunnel and now they fired shot after shot from Harfleur’s walls. The smoke billowed like thunderclouds to darken the already dark sky as the gun-stones bounced and thudded off the sow’s stout flanks.
“Robert!” a voice shouted from the sow.
“That’s Tom!” Robert Perrill said, recognizing his brother’s voice. He took a breath to call back, but Hook stopped his mouth with a hand.
“Keep quiet,” Hook snarled. A crossbow bolt tumbled down the trench and smacked into Hook’s mail. It had lost its force and bounced away as another bolt struck sparks from a lump of flint nearby. “What happens now?” Hook asked, taking his hand away from Robert Perrill’s mouth.
“What do you mean?”
“I take you back and you try and kill me again.”
“No!” Perrill said. “Get me out of here, Nick! I can’t move!”
“So what happens now?” Hook asked again. Crossbow bolts were cracking into the sow so frequently that it sounded like hail on a timber roof.
“I won’t kill you,” Perrill said.
“What should I do?” Hook asked.
“Pull me out, Nick, please,” Perrill said.
“I wasn’t talking to you. What should I do?”
“What do you think?” Saint Crispin, the harsher brother, said in a mocking voice.
“It’s murder,” Hook said.
“I won’t kill you!” Perrill insisted.
“You think we saved the girl so she could be raped?” Saint Crispinian asked.
“Get me out of this muck,” Perrill said, “please!”
Instead Hook reached out and found one of the spent crossbow bolts. It was as long as his forearm, as thick as two thumbs, and fledged with stiff leather vanes. The point was rusted, but still sharp.
He killed Perrill the easiest way. He smacked him hard around the head, and while the archer was still recovering from the blow, drove the bolt down through one eye. It went in easily, glancing off the socket, and Hook kept driving the thick shaft into Perrill’s brain until the rusted point scraped against the back of Perrill’s skull. The archer twisted and jerked, choked and quivered, but he died quickly enough.
“Robert!” Tom Perrill shouted from the sow.
A springolt bolt struck a masonry chimney breast left standing in the scorched remains of a burned house. The bolt spun into the falling darkness, end over end, soaring over the English trenches to fall far beyond. Hook wiped his wounded right hand on Robert Perrill’s tunic, cleaning off the muck that had spurted from the dead man’s eye, then heaved himself free of the soil. It was very nearly night and the smoke of the gunshots still shrouded what little light remained. He stepped over Perrill and staggered toward the sow, his legs slow to find their strength again. Crossbow bolts flicked past him, but their aim was wild now and Hook reached the sow safely. He held on to its flank as he walked, then dropped into the safety of the trench. Lanterns lit his dirt-crusted face and men stared at him.
“How many others survived?” a man-at-arms asked.
“Don’t know,” Hook said.
“Here,” a priest brought him a pot and Hook drank. He had not realized how thirsty he was until he tasted the ale.
“My brother?” Thomas Perrill was among the men staring at Hook.
“Killed by a crossbow bolt,” Hook said curtly and stared up into Perrill’s long face. “Straight through the eye,” he added brutally. Perrill stared at him, and then Sir John Cornewaille pushed through the small crowd in the sow’s pit.
“Hook!”
“I’m alive, Sir John.”