“I suspect he disapproves of his brother’s decision,” Father Christopher said blandly. “Officially, of course, the duke is ill, but he looked remarkably well for an ailing man. And, of course, if Henry is killed, God forbid, Clarence will become King Thomas.”
“Our Harry won’t die,” Hook said fiercely.
“He very well might if the French catch us,” the priest said tartly, “but even our Henry has listened to advice. He was told to go home, he wanted to march to Paris, but he’s settled for Calais instead. And with God’s help, Hook, we should reach Calais long before the French can reach us.”
“You make it sound as if we’re running away.”
“Not quite,” the priest said, “but almost. Think of your lovely Melisande.”
Hook frowned, puzzled. “Melisande?”
“The French are gathered at her bellybutton, Hook, and we are perched on her right nipple. What we plan to do is run to her left nipple and hope to God the French don’t make it to her cleavage before us.”
“And if they do?”
“Then the cleavage will become the valley of the shadow of death,” Father Christopher said, “so pray that we march fast and that the French go on sleeping.”
“You can’t be fussy!” Sir John had told his archers in the taproom. “We can’t pack arrows in barrels, we don’t have the carts to carry barrels! And you can’t use discs! So bundle them, bundle them tight!”
Bundled arrows suffered from crushed fledgings, and crushed fledgings made arrows inaccurate, but there was no choice but to bind the arrows in tight sheaves that could be hung from a saddle or across a packhorse’s back. It took two days to tie the sheaves, for the king was demanding that every available arrow be carried on the journey and that meant carrying hundreds of thousands of arrows. As many as possible were heaped on the light farm carts that would accompany the army, but there were not enough such vehicles, so even men-at-arms were ordered to tie the bundles behind their saddles. There were just five thousand archers marching to Calais and in one minute those men were capable of shooting sixty or seventy thousand arrows, and no battle was ever won in a minute. “If we take every arrow we’ve got, there still won’t be enough,” Thomas Evelgold grumbled, “and then we’ll be throwing rocks at the bastards.”
A garrison was left at Harfleur. It was a strong force of over three hundred men-at-arms and almost a thousand archers, though it was short of horses because the king demanded that the garrison give up every beast except the knights’ war-trained destriers. The horses were needed to carry arrows. The new defenders of Harfleur were left perilously short of arrows themselves, but new ones were expected to arrive any day from England where foresters cut ash shafts, blacksmiths forged bodkins and broadheads, and fledgers bound on the goose feathers.
“We will march swiftly!” a priest with a booming voice shouted. It was the day before the army marched and the priest was visiting every street in Harfleur with a parchment on which the king’s orders had been written. The priest’s job was to make certain every man understood the king’s commands. “There will be no straggling! Above all, the property of the church is sacred! Any man who plunders church property will be hanged! God is with us, and we march to show that by His grace we are the masters of France!”
“You heard him!” Sir John shouted as the priest walked on. “Keep your thieving hands off church property! Don’t rape nuns! God doesn’t like it, and nor do I!”
That night, in the church of Saint Martin, Father Christopher made Hook and Melisande man and wife. Melisande cried and Hook, as he knelt and gazed at the candles guttering on the altar, wished Saint Crispinian would speak to him, but the saint said nothing. He wished he had thought to summon his brother to the church, but there had been no opportunity. Father Christopher had simply insisted that it was time Hook made Melisande his wife and so had taken them to the broken-spired church. “God be with you,” the priest said when the brief ceremony was done.
“He has been,” Melisande said.
“Then pray that He stays with you, because we need God’s help now.” The priest turned and bowed to the altar. “By God we need it,” he added ominously, “the Burgundians have marched.”
“To help us?” Hook asked. It seemed so long ago that he had worn the ragged red cross of Burgundy and watched as the troops of France had massacred a city.
“No,” Father Christopher said, “to help France.”
“But…” Hook began, then his voice trailed away.
“They have made up their family quarrel,” Father Christopher said, “and so turned against us.”
“And we’re still going to march?” Hook asked.
“The king insists,” Father Christopher said bleakly. “We are a small army at the edge of a great land,” he went on, “but at least you two are joined now for all time. Even death cannot separate you.”
“Thanks be to God,” Melisande said, and made the sign of the cross.
Next day, the eighth day of October, a Tuesday, the feast day of Saint Benedicta, under a clear sky, the army marched.
They went north, following the coastline, and Hook felt the army’s spirits rise as they rode away from the smell of shit and death. Men grinned for no apparent reason, friends teased each other cheerfully, and some put spurs to horses and just galloped for the sheer joy of being in open country again.
Sir John Cornewaille commanded the army’s vanguard, and his own men were in the van of the van and so rode at the very front of the column. Sir John’s banner flew between the cross of Saint George and the flag of the Holy Trinity, the three standards guarded by Sir John’s men-at-arms and followed by four mounted drummers who beat incessantly. The archers rode ahead, scouting the path, and watching for an enemy whose first appearance was an ambush, though none of Sir John’s men was involved. The French had waited until the well-armed and vigilant vanguard had gone by, then had sallied from Montivilliers, a walled town close to the road. Crossbowmen shot from the woods and a group of men-at-arms charged the column and there was a flurry of fighting before the attackers, who numbered fewer than fifty men, were beaten off, though not before they had managed to take a half-dozen prisoners and leave two English dead.
That skirmish occurred on the first day, but thereafter the French seemed to fall back into sleep and so the English men-at-arms rode unarmored, their mail and plate carried by the sumpter horses. The riders’ different colored jerkins gave the mounted column a holiday appearance, enhanced by the banners flying at the head of every contingent. The women, pages and, servants rode behind the men-at-arms, leading packhorses loaded with armor, food, and the great bundles of arrows. Sir John’s company had two light carts, one loaded with food and plate armor, the other heaped with arrows. When Hook turned in his saddle he saw a filmy cloud of dust pluming over the low hills and heavy woods. The dust marked the trail of England’s army as it twisted through the small valleys leading toward the River Somme, and to Hook it appeared to be a large army, but in truth it was a defiant band of fewer than ten thousand men, and only looked larger because there were over twenty thousand horses.
On the Sunday they dropped out of the small, tight hills into a more open and flatter countryside. Sir John had suggested that this was the day they should reach the Somme, and had added that the Somme was the only major obstacle on their journey. Cross that river and they would have a mere three days’ marching to Calais. “So there won’t be a battle?” Michael Hook asked his brother. Lord Slayton’s men were also in the vanguard, though Sir Martin and Thomas Perrill stayed well clear of Sir John and his men.
“They say no,” Hook said, “but who knows?”
“The French won’t stop us?”
“They don’t seem to be trying, do they?” Hook said, nodding at the empty country ahead. He and the rest of Sir John’s archers were a half-mile in front of the column, leading the way to the river. “Maybe the French are happy to see us go?” he suggested. “They’re just leaving us be, perhaps?”