“It’s a day of battle,” Father Christopher said, “and you should go to your enemies and beg their forgiveness and make your peace.” The priest paused, but Hook said nothing. “Other men are doing that,” Father Christopher went on. “They’re seeking out their enemies and making their peace. You should do the same.”
“I promised not to kill him in the battle,” Hook said.
“That’s not enough, Nick. You want to go to God’s judgment with hatred in your heart?”
“I can’t make peace with them,” Hook said, “not after they killed Michael.”
“Christ forgave His enemies, Nick, and we are to be like Christ.”
“I’m not Christ, father. I’m Nick Hook.”
“And God loves you,” Father Christopher sighed, then made the sign of the cross on Nick’s head. “You will not murder either man, Nick. That is a command from God. You understand me? You will not go into this battle with hatred in your heart. That way God will look gently on you. Promise me you will think no murder, Nick.”
It was a struggle. Hook was silent for a while, then he nodded abruptly. “I won’t kill them, father,” he said unhappily.
“Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. You swear that?”
There was another pause. Hook was thinking of the long years, of the embedded hatred, of the loathing he felt for Sir Martin and for Tom Perrill, and then he thought of what he had to face this day and he knew that if he were to go to heaven then he must give Father Christopher the solemn promise. He nodded abruptly. “I swear it,” he said.
Father Christopher’s hands tightened on Hook’s bare scalp again. “Your penance is to shoot well this day, Nicholas Hook. Shoot well for God and your king. Te absolvo,” he said. “Your sins are forgiven. Now look up at me.”
Hook looked up. The rain had finally stopped. He stared into Father Christopher’s eyes as the priest took a sliver of charcoal and carefully wrote on Hook’s forehead. “There,” he said when he was finished.
“What’s that, father?”
Father Christopher smiled, “I’ve written IHC Nazar on your forehead. Some folk believe it protects a man from sudden death.”
“What does it mean, father?”
“It’s the name of Christ, the Nazarene.”
“Write it on Melisande’s forehead, father.”
“I will, Hook, of course I will. Now ready yourself for the body of Christ.” Hook received the sacrament and then, as other men were doing and as the king had done, he took a pinch of wet earth and swallowed it with the wafer to show he was ready for death. The gesture proclaimed he was prepared to receive the earth as the earth might have to receive him. “God bless you, Nick,” Father Christopher said.
“I hope we meet when it’s over, father,” Hook said, pulling the helmet over his aventail.
“I pray that too,” the priest said.
“The shit-eating bastards must come soon,” Will of the Dale grumbled when Hook rejoined his men, yet the French showed no sign of wanting to attack. They waited, their deep ranks almost filling the wide space between the woods. The English heralds, resplendent in their liveries and holding their long white wands, had ridden halfway to the enemy’s line where they had been met by French and Burgundian heralds and now they all made a bright group that sat on their horses at the edge of the trees beside a tumbledown hovel with a mossy roof. They would observe the battle together and at its end they would decree the winner.
“Come on, you goddam bastards,” a man grumbled.
But the goddam bastards did not come. Their trumpets howled, but the long steel ranks showed no sign of being ready to advance. They waited. The trapper-bright horses milled about to hide the crossbowmen behind. A brief ray of sunlight shone on the center of their line and Hook saw the oriflamme, the red forked pennant that announced to the French that they were to take no prisoners. Kill everyone.
“Evelgold! Hook! Magot! Candeler!” Now it was Sir John Cornewaille’s turn to pace in front of the archers. “Come here! The four of you!”
Hook joined the other three sergeants. It was extraordinarily hard to walk through the deep plow because the clay soil had turned to a viscous reddish mud that clung to his boots. It was even harder for Sir John who was wearing full plate armor, sixty pounds of steel, so that he lurched as he walked, forced to drag each steel-plated foot out of the earth’s sucking grip. Sir John struggled to a place some forty or fifty paces ahead of the archers and there waited for his sergeants. “You always want to look at your own army,” he greeted them, “to see it as the enemy does. Have a look.”
Hook turned to stare at a mud-spattered, rusted and bedraggled army. His army. The center of the line was made of three battles, each of around three hundred men-at-arms. The central battle was commanded by the king, the one on the far right by Lord Camoys, while the left-hand battle was led by the Duke of York. Between the three battles were two small groups of archers, while on either flank were the much larger contingents of bowmen. Those two flanking groups, with their stakes, were angled ahead of the line’s center so that their arrows could fly in from the sides. “So what do the French do?” Sir John demanded.
“Attack,” Evelgold said dourly.
“Attack what and why?” Sir John asked harshly. None of the four archers answered, instead they gazed at their own small army and wondered what reply Sir John wanted. “Think!” Sir John growled, his bright blue eyes darting between his sergeants. “You’re a Frenchman! You live in some shit-spattered manor with rats in the damp walls and mice dancing in the roof. What do you want?”
“Money,” Hook suggested.
“So what do you attack?”
“The flags,” Thomas Evelgold said.
“Because that’s where the money is,” Sir John said. “The goddamned bastards are flying the oriflamme,” he went on, “but that means nothing. They want prisoners. They want rich prisoners. They want the king, the Duke of York, the Duke of Gloucester, they want me, they want ransoms! There’s no profit in slaughtering archers, so the bastards will attack the men-at-arms. They’ll attack the flags, but some might come for you so drive them into the center with arrows. That’s what you do! Drive their flanks into the center. Because that’s where I can kill them.”
“If we’ve got enough arrows,” Evelgold said doubtfully.
“Save enough!” Sir John said forcibly, “because if you run out of arrows you’re going to have to fight them hand to hand and they’re trained to that, you’re not.”
“You trained us, Sir John,” Hook said, remembering the winter of practice with swords and axes.
“You’re half-trained, but the other archers?” Sir John asked derisively, and Hook, looking at the waiting men, knew they were no match for French men-at-arms. The archers were tailors and cordwainers, fullers and carpenters, millers and butchers. They were tradesmen who possessed a superb skill, the ability to draw the cord of a yew bow to their ear and send the arrow on its deathward journey. They were killers, but they were not men hardened to war by tournaments and trained from childhood in the discipline of blades. Many of them had no armor other than a padded jacket, and some did not even possess that small protection. “God keep the French from getting among them!” Sir John said.
None of the sergeants responded. They were thinking of what would happen when French men-at-arms, clad in steel, came to kill them. Hook shivered, then was distracted by the sight of five horsemen riding under the English royal banner toward the waiting French army. “What are they doing, Sir John?” Evelgold asked.
“The king has sent them to make an appeal for peace,” Sir John said, “they’ll demand that the French yield the crown to Henry, and then we’ll agree not to slaughter them.”
Evelgold just stared at Sir John as if he did not believe what he had heard. Hook suppressed a laugh and Sir John shrugged. “So they won’t accept the terms,” he said, “and that means we fight, but it doesn’t mean that they’ll attack us.”