“Nothing.”
“Say it!”
“I was going to say I’d kill you and you could kill me before they torture us, but that would be difficult, wouldn’t it? I mean you’d be dead and you’d find it really hard to kill me if you were dead.” Scarlet had sounded serious, but then began to laugh and suddenly they were all laughing helplessly, though none really knew why. Dead men laughing, but that, Hook thought, was better than weeping.
They shared the wine, which did nothing to warm them, and slowly, gray as mail, the dawn relieved the dark. Hook went into the eastern woods to empty his bowels and saw a small village just beyond the trees. French men-at-arms had quartered themselves in the hovels and now were mounting horses and riding toward the main encampment. Back on the plateau Hook watched the French forming their battles under their damp standards.
And the English did the same. Nine hundred men-at-arms and five thousand archers came to the field of Agincourt in the dawn, and across from them, across the furrows that had been deep plowed to receive the winter wheat, thirty thousand Frenchmen waited.
To do battle on Saint Crispin’s Day.
PART FOUR
Saint Crispin’s Day
ELEVEN
Dawn was cold and gray. A few spatters of rain blew fitfully across the plowed field, but Hook sensed the night’s downpours had ended. Small patches of mist clung to the furrows and lingered in the dripping trees.
The drummers behind the center of the English line were beating a quick rhythm that was punctuated by the flaring sound of trumpets. The musicians were massed where the king’s banner, the largest in the army, was flanked by the cross of Saint George, by the banner of Edward the Confessor, and by the flag of the Holy Trinity. That quartet of banners, all flown from extra-long poles, was in the middle of the center battle, while the flanking battles, the rearguard and vanguard, were similarly dominated by their leaders’ standards. There were at least fifty other flags flying in the damp air above Henry’s men-at-arms, but those English standards were as nothing to the array of silk and linen that was flaunted by the French. “Count the banners,” Thomas Evelgold had suggested as a way of estimating the French numbers, “and reckon every flag is a lord with twenty men.” Some French lords would have fewer men-at-arms and most would have far more, but Tom Evelgold was certain his method would yield an approximation of the enemy’s numbers, except that even Hook, with his good eyesight, could not distinguish the separate flags. There were simply too many. “There are thousands of the bastards,” Evelgold said unhappily, “and look at all those goddam crossbowmen!” The French archers were on the enemy’s flanks, but some way behind the leading men-at-arms.
“You wait!” an elderly man-at-arms, gray-haired and mounted on a mud-spattered gelding, shouted at the archers. He was just one of the numerous men who had come to offer advice or orders. “You wait,” he called again, “till I throw my baton in the air!” The man held up a short, thick staff that was wrapped in green cloth and surmounted by golden finials. “That’s the signal to shoot arrows! No one is to shoot before that! You watch for my baton!”
“Who’s that?” Hook asked Evelgold.
“Sir Thomas Erpingham.”
“Who’s he?”
“The man who throws the baton,” Evelgold said.
“I shall throw it high!” Sir Thomas shouted, “like this!” He threw the baton vigorously so that it circled high in the rain above him. He lunged to catch it as it fell, but missed. Hook wondered if that was a bad omen.
“Fetch it, Horrocks,” Evelgold said, “and look lively, lad!” Horrocks could not run, the furrows and ridges were too thick with mud and so his feet sank up to his ankles, but he retrieved the green stick and held it to the gray-haired knight. Sir Thomas thanked him, then moved down the line of archers to shout his orders again. Hook noticed how Sir Thomas’s horse struggled in the plowed land. “They must have set the share deep,” Evelgold said.
“Winter wheat,” Hook said.
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Always plow deeper for winter wheat,” Hook explained.
“I never had to plow,” Evelgold said. He had been a tanner before he was appointed as a ventenar to Sir John.
“Plow deep in autumn and shallow in spring,” Hook said.
“I suppose it’ll save the bastards from digging us graves,” Evelgold said dourly, “they can just roll us into those big furrows and kick the soil over us.”
“Sky’s clearing,” Hook said. Off to the west, above the ramparts of the small castle of Agincourt that just showed above the woodland, the light was brightening.
“At least the bowstrings will be dry,” Evelgold remarked, “which means we might kill a few of the goddam bastards before they slaughter us.”
The enemy flew more banners and they also had more musicians. The English trumpeters were playing brief series of defiant notes, then pausing to let the drummers beat their sharp, insistent rhythm, but the French trumpets never stopped. They clawed at English ears, a braying sound that rose and fell on the cold wind. Most of the French army was on foot, like the English, but on either wing Hook could see masses of mounted knights. The horses wore long linen trappers embroidered with coats of arms. Their riders were trying to keep the beasts warm by walking them up and down. Lances pricked the sky. “The goddam bastards will come soon,” Tom Scarlet said.
“Maybe,” Hook said, “maybe not.” He half wished the French would come and get the ordeal over, and he half wished he was safely back in England, abed.
“Don’t string up till they move,” Evelgold called to Sir John’s archers. He had offered the advice at least six times already, but none of the bowmen seemed to notice. They shivered and watched the enemy. “Shit!” Evelgold added.
“What?” Hook asked, alarmed.
“I just stepped in some.”
“That’s supposed to bring you luck,” Hook said.
“Then I’d better dance in the goddam stuff.”
Priests were saying mass among the archers and, one by one, the men went to receive the bread of life and have their sins forgiven. The king was ostentatiously kneeling bareheaded before one of his chaplains out in front of the center battle. He had ridden the line once, mounted on a small white horse, and the gilded crown that circled his battle-helm had looked unnaturally bright in the morning’s gloom. He had chivvied men into position and leaned out of his saddle to tug at an archer’s stake to ensure it was well bedded in the soil. “God is with us, fellows!” he had called to the archers. The bowmen had started to kneel in deference, but he had waved them up. “God is on our side! Be confident!”
“Wish God has sent more Englishmen,” a voice had dared to call from among the bowmen.
“Never wish that!” the king had sounded cheerful. “God’s providence is sufficient! We are enough to do His work!”
Hook hoped to God the king was right as he went back to kneel before Father Christopher who was dressed in a black priestly robe over which he wore a mud-spattered chasuble embroidered with white doves, green crosses, and the Cornewaille red lions. “I’ve sinned, father,” Hook said, and he made a confession he had never made before; that he had murdered Robert Perrill and still planned to murder both Thomas Perrill and Sir Martin. It was hard to say the words, but Hook was driven to it by the thought, almost a certainty, that this was his last day on earth.
Father Christopher’s hands tightened on Hook’s head. “Why did you commit murder?” he asked.
“The Perrills murdered my grandfather, my father, and my brother,” Hook said.
“And now you have murdered one of them,” Father Christopher said sternly. “Nick, it must finish.”
“I hate them, father.”