Then there was a catching up of news. Hook said that Robert Perrill had been killed in the siege, though he did not say how, and Michael told how their grandmother had died, a fact that did not trouble Hook in the least. “She was a bitter old bitch,” he said.
“She looked after us, though,” Michael said.
“She looked after you, not me.”
Then Melisande came from the tavern and she was introduced, and Hook felt a sudden, wild and unfamiliar happiness. The two people he loved most were with him, and he had money in his pockets, and all seemed well with the world. The campaign in France might be over, and over before it had gained any great victory, but he was still happy. “I’ll ask Sir John if you can join us,” he told Michael.
“I don’t think Lord Slayton will allow that,” Michael said.
“Aye, well, we can only ask.”
“So what’s going to happen here?” Michael wanted to know.
“I reckon some poor bastards will be left here to defend this town,” Hook said, “and the rest of us will go home.”
“Go home?” Michael frowned. “But we just got here!”
“That’s what folk are saying. The lords are trying to make the decision now, but it’s too late in the year to go marching inland and, besides, the French army’s too big. We’ll be going home.”
“I hope not,” Michael said. He grinned. “I didn’t come this far to go home again. I want to fight.”
“No, you don’t,” Hook said, and surprised himself by saying it. Melisande was also surprised, looking at him curiously.
“I don’t?”
“It’s blood,” Hook said, “and men crying for their mothers, and too much screaming, and pain and bastards in metal trying to kill you.”
Michael was taken aback. “They say we just shoot arrows at them,” he said falteringly.
“Aye, you do, but in the end, brother, you have to get close. Close enough to see their eyes. Close enough to kill them.”
“And Nicholas is good at that,” Melisande said flatly.
“Not every man is,” Hook said, suspecting that Michael, with his generous and trusting nature, lacked the ruthlessness to get close and commit slaughter.
“Maybe just one battle,” Michael said wistfully, “not a very big one.”
Hook took Michael through the town at sundown. Lord Slayton’s men had found houses close to the Montivilliers Gate and Hook led his brother there and so into the yard of a merchant’s house where the archers were quartered. His old companions went silent as the Hook brothers appeared. There was no sign of Sir Martin, but Tom Perrill, dark and brooding, was sitting against a wall, and he stared expressionless at the two Hooks. William Snoball sensed trouble and stood up.
“Michael’s joining you,” Hook announced loudly, “and Sir John Cornewaille wants you to know that my brother is under his protection.” Sir John had said no such thing, but none of Lord Slayton’s men would know that.
Tom Perrill gave a mocking laugh, but said nothing. William Snoball confronted Hook. “There’ll be no trouble,” he agreed.
“There will indeed be no trouble!” A voice echoed the statement and Hook turned to see Sir Edward Derwent, Lord Slayton’s captain who had been captured in the mine, standing in the courtyard entrance. Sir Edward had been freed when the town surrendered, and Hook reckoned he must have been at the council of war because he was dressed in his finest clothes. Sir Edward now strode to the courtyard’s center. “There will be no trouble!” he said again. “None of you will fight each other, because your job is to fight the French!”
“I thought we were going home,” Snoball said, puzzled.
“Well, you’re not,” Sir Edward said. “The king wants more, and what the king wants, he gets.”
“We’re staying here?” Hook asked, incredulous. “In Harfleur?”
“No, Hook,” Sir Edward said, “we’re marching.” He sounded grim, as though he disapproved of the decision. But Henry was king and, as Sir Edward had said, what the king wanted the king got.
And what Henry wanted was more war.
And so the army would march into France.
PART THREE
To the River of Swords
NINE
There were to be no heavy wagons taken on the march. Instead the baggage would be carried by men, packhorses, and light carts. “We have to travel fast,” Sir John explained.
“It’s pride,” Father Christopher told Hook later, “nothing but pride.”
“Pride?”
“The king can’t just crawl back to England with nothing but Harfleur to show for his money! He has to do more than merely kick the French dog, he feels a need to pull its tail as well.”
The French dog did appear to be sleeping. Reports said the enemy army grew ever larger, but it showed no sign of stirring from around Rouen, and so the King of England had decided he would show Christendom that he could march from Harfleur to Calais with impunity. “It isn’t that far,” Sir John told his men, “maybe a week’s march.”
“And what do we gain from a week’s march through France?” Hook asked Father Christopher.
“Nothing,” the priest said bluntly.
“So why do it?”
“To show that we can. To show that the French are helpless.”
“And we travel without the big wagons?”
Father Christopher grinned. “We don’t want the helpless French to catch us, do we? That would be a disaster, young Hook! So we can’t take two hundred heavy wains with us, that would slow us down far too much, so it will be horses, spurs and the devil take the hindmost.”
“This is important!” Sir John had told his men. He had stormed into the Paon’s taproom and hammered one of the barrels with the hilt of his sword. “Are you awake? Are you listening? You take food for eight days! And all the arrows you can carry! You take weapons, armor, arrows, and food, and nothing else! If I see any man carrying anything other than weapons, armor, arrows, and food I’ll shove that useless baggage down his goddam gullet and pull it out of his goddam arse! We have to travel fast!”
“It all happened before,” Father Christopher told Hook next morning.
“Before?”
“You don’t know your history, Hook?”
“I know my grandfather was murdered, and my father too.”
“I do so love a happy family,” the priest said, “but think back to your great-grandfather’s time, when Edward was king. The third Edward. He was here in Normandy and decided to make a quick march to Calais, only he got trapped halfway.”
“And died?”
“Oh, good God, no, he beat the French! You’ve surely heard of Crécy?”
“Oh, I’ve heard of Crécy!” Hook said. Every archer knew of Crécy, the battle where the bowmen of England had cut down the nobility of France.
“So you know it was a glorious battle, Hook, in which God favored the English, but God’s favor is a fickle thing.”
“Are you telling me He’s not on our side?”
“I’m telling you that God is on the side of whoever wins, Hook.”
Hook considered that for a moment. He was sharpening arrowheads, slithering the bodkins and broadheads against a stone. He thought of all the tales he had heard as a child when old men had spoken of the arrow-storms of Crécy and Poitiers, then flourished a bodkin at Father Christopher. “If we meet the French,” he said stoutly, “we’ll win. We’ll punch these through their armor, father.”
“I have a grievous suspicion that the king agrees with you,” the priest said gently. “He really does believe God is on his side, but his brother evidently does not.”
“Which brother?” Hook asked. The Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Gloucester were both with the army.
“Clarence,” Father Christopher said. “He’s sailing home.”
Hook frowned at that news. The duke, according to some men, was an even better soldier than his older brother. Hook inspected a bodkin. Most of the long narrow head was dark with rust, but the point was now shining metal and wickedly sharp. He tested it by pricking the ball of his hand, then wet his fingers and smoothed out the fledging. “Why’s he going?”