Agincourt - Cornwell Bernard - Страница 41

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“Of course I do,” Hook said. Every archer knew of Sir Robert, who had died rich not many years before.

“He was an archer once,” Melisande said.

“That’s how he started,” Hook agreed, wondering how Melisande knew of the legendary Sir Robert.

“And he became a knight,” Melisande said, “he led armies! And now Sir John has made you a ventenar.”

“A ventenar isn’t a knight,” Hook said, smiling.

“But Sir Robert was a ventenar once!” Melisande said fiercely, “and then he became a centenar, and then a man-at-arms, and after that a knight! Alice told me. And if he could do it, why not you?”

That vision was so astonishing that Hook could only stare at her for a moment. “Me? A man-at-arms?” he finally said.

“Why not?”

“I’m not born to that!”

“Nor was Sir Robert.”

“Well, it does happen,” Hook said dubiously. He knew of other archers who had led companies and become rich. Sir Robert was the most famous, but archers also remembered Thomas of Hookton who had died as lord of a thousand acres. “But it doesn’t happen often,” Hook went on, “and it takes money.”

“And what is war to you men but money? They talk without end of prisoners? Of ransoms?” Melisande pointed her brush at him and grinned mischievously. “Capture my father. We’ll ransom him. We’ll take his money.”

“You’d like that, would you?” Hook asked.

“Yes,” she said vengefully, “I would like that.”

Hook tried to imagine being rich. Of receiving a ransom that would be more than most men could earn in a lifetime, and then he forgot that dream as John Fletcher, who was one of the older archers and a man who had shown some resentment at Hook’s promotion, suddenly flinched and ran toward the midden trench. Fletcher’s face looked pale. “Fletch is ill,” Hook said.

“And poor Alice was horribly sick this morning,” Melisande said, wrinkling her nose in distaste, “la diarrhee!”

Hook decided he did not want to know more about Alice Godewyne’s sickness, and he was saved from further details by Sir John Cornewaille’s arrival. “Are we awake?” the knight bellowed, “are we awake and breathing?”

“We are now, Sir John,” Hook answered for the archers.

“Then down to the trenches! Down to the trenches! Let’s get this goddam siege done!”

Hook donned his damp boots and half-scrubbed mail, pulled on his helmet and surcoat, then went to the trenches. The siege went on.

The sow shuddered each time a gun-stone struck its sloping face. The logs that formed the face were battered, split, and bristling with springolt bolts, but the enemy’s missiles had failed to break the heavy shield or even weaken it, and beneath the layers of timber and earth the Welsh miners went to work.

Other shafts were being driven on Harfleur’s eastern side where the Duke of Clarence’s forces were camped, and from both east and west the guns roared and the stones clawed at the walls, the mangonels and trebuchets dropped boulders into the town, smoke and dust erupted and plumed from the narrow streets while the mines crept toward the ramparts. The eastern shafts were being driven under the walls where great caverns, shored with timber, would be clawed out of the chalk and, when the time came, the timber supports would be burned away so that the caverns would collapse and bring down the ramparts above. The western mine, its entrance guarded by the sow Hook had helped make, was intended to tunnel under the vast battered bastion that protected the Leure Gate. Bring that barbican down and the English army could attack the breach beside the gate without any danger of being assaulted on their flank by the barbican’s garrison. So the Welshmen dug and the archers guarded their sow and the town suffered.

The barbican had been made from great oak trunks that had been sunk into the earth and then hooped with iron. The trunks had formed the outline of two squat round towers joined by a brief curtain wall, and their interior had been rammed with earth and rubble, the whole protected by a flooded ditch facing the besiegers. The English guns had splintered the nearest timbers so that the earth had spilled out to make a steep unstable ramp that filled one part of the ditch, yet still the bastion resisted. Its ruin was manned by crossbowmen and men-at-arms, and its banners hung defiantly from what remained of its wooden ramparts. Each night, when the English guns ceased fire, the defenders made repairs and the dawn would reveal a new timber palisade and the guns would have to begin their slow work of demolition again. Other guns fired at the town itself.

When Hook had first seen Harfleur it had looked almost magical to him: a town of tight roofs and church steeples all girdled by a white, tower-studded wall that had glowed in the August sun. It had looked like the painted town in the picture of Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian in Soissons Cathedral, the picture he had stared at for so long as he said his prayers.

Now the painted town was a battered heap of stones, mud, smoke, and shattered houses. Long stretches of the walls still stood and still flaunted their derisive banners that displayed the badges of the garrison’s leaders, images of the saints and invocations to God, but eight of the towers had been collapsed into the town ditch, and one long length of rampart had been beaten into wreckage close to the Leure Gate. The great missiles lobbed into the town by the catapults smashed houses and started fires so that a pall of smoke hung constantly above the besieged town. A church steeple had fallen, taking its bells in a mighty cacophony, and still the boulders and gun-stones hammered at the already hammered town.

And still the defenders fought back. Each dawn Hook led men into the pits that defended the English guns and in every dawn he saw where the garrison had been working. They were making a new wall behind the broken rampart and they shored up the collapsing barbican with new timbers. English heralds, holding their white wands and gaudy in their colored coats, rode to the enemy walls to offer terms, but the enemy commanders rebuffed the heralds each time. “What they’re hoping,” Father Christopher told Hook one early September morning, “is that their king will lead an army to their rescue.”

“I thought the French king was mad?”

“Oh, so he is! He believes he is made of glass!” Father Christopher said mockingly. The priest visited the trenches every morning, offering blessings and jests to the archers. “It’s true! He thinks he’s made of glass and will shatter if he falls. He also chews rugs and tells his troubles to the moon.”

“So he won’t be leading any army here, father,” Hook said, smiling.

“But the mad king has sons, Hook, and they’re all blood-thirsty little scum. Any one of them would love to grind our bones to powder.”

“Will they try?”

“God knows, Hook, God alone knows and He isn’t telling me. But I do know there’s an army gathering at Rouen.”

“Is that far?”

“See that road?” The priest pointed to the faint remains of a road that had once led from the Leure Gate, but which was now only a scar in a muddy, missile-battered landscape. “Follow that,” Father Christopher said, “and turn right when it reaches the hill and keep going, and after fifty miles you’ll find a great bridge and a huge city. That’s Rouen, Hook. Fifty miles? An army can march that in three days!”

“So they come,” Hook said, “and we’ll kill them.”

“King Harold said much the same just before Hastings,” Father Christopher said gently.

“Did Harold have archers?” Hook asked.

“Just men-at-arms, I think.”

“Well, then,” Hook said and grinned.

The priest raised his head to peer at Harfleur. “We should have captured the place by now,” he said wistfully. “It’s taking much too long.” He turned because a passing man-at-arms had greeted him cheerfully. Father Christopher returned the greeting and made a sketchy sign of blessing toward the hurrying man. “You know who that was, Hook?”

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