Agincourt - Cornwell Bernard - Страница 47

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Two mornings after Hook had stumbled away from the fallen mine there was a sudden flurry of gunshots from the walls of Harfleur. The garrison had loaded their cannon and now fired them all at the same time so that the battered town was edged with smoke. Defenders cheered from the walls and waved derisive flags.

“A ship got through to them,” Sir John explained.

“A ship?” Hook asked.

“For Christ’s sake, you know what a ship is!”

“But how?”

“Our goddam fleet was asleep, that’s how! Now the goddam bastards have got food. God damn the bastards.” It seemed God had changed sides, for the defenses of Harfleur, though battered and broken, were constantly replenished and rebuilt. New walls backed the broken old, and every night the garrison deepened the defensive ditch and raised new obstacles in the shattered breaches. The intensity of the crossbow bolts did not let up, proof that the town had been well stocked, or else that the ship that had evaded the blockade had brought a new supply. The English, meanwhile, grew more ill. Sir John ducked into Father Christopher’s tent and stared at the priest. “How is he?” he asked Melisande.

She shrugged. As far as Hook could tell the priest was already dead, for he lay unmoving on his back, his mouth slackly open and his skin grayish pale.

“Is he breathing?” Sir John demanded.

Melisande nodded.

“God help us,” Sir John said and backed out of the tent, “God help us,” he said again, and stared at the town. It should have fallen two weeks ago, yet there it lay, defiant still, the wreckage of its wall and towers protecting the new barricades that had been built behind.

There was some good news. Sir Edward Derwent was a prisoner in Harfleur, as was Dafydd ap Traharn. The heralds, returning from another vain attempt to persuade the garrison to surrender, told how the men trapped in the mine’s far end had surrendered. The collapsed mine had been abandoned, though on Harfleur’s eastern side, where the king’s brother led the siege, other shafts were still being driven toward the walls. The best news was that the French were making no effort to relieve the town. English patrols were riding far into the countryside to find grain, and there was no sign of an enemy army coming to strike at the disease-weakened English. Harfleur, it seemed, had been left to rot, though it appeared now that the besiegers would be destroyed first.

“All that money,” Sir John said bleakly, “and all we’ve done is march a couple of miles to become lords of graves and shit-pits.”

“So why don’t we just leave it?” Hook asked. “Just march away?”

“A goddam stupid question,” Sir John said. “The place might surrender tomorrow! And all Christendom is watching. If we abandon the siege we look weak. And besides, even if we did march inland we won’t necessarily find the French. They’ve learned to fear English armies and they know the quickest way to get rid of us is to hide themselves in fortresses. So we might just abandon this siege to start another. No, we have to take this goddam town.”

“Then why don’t we attack?” Hook asked.

“Because we’ll lose too many men,” Sir John said. “Imagine it, Hook. Crossbows, springolts, guns, all tearing into us as we advance, killing us while we fill the ditch, and then we get over the wall’s rubble to find a new ditch, a new wall, and more crossbows, more guns, more catapults. We can’t afford to lose a hundred dead and four hundred crippled. We came here to conquer France, not die in this rancid shit-hole.” He kicked at the hard ground, then stared at the sea where six English ships lay at anchor off the harbor entrance. “If I commanded Harfleur’s garrison,” he said ruefully, “I know just what I’d do now.”

“What’s that?”

“Attack,” Sir John said. “Kick us while we’re half crippled. We speak of chivalry, Hook, and we are chivalrous. We fight so politely! Yet you know how to win a battle?”

“Fight dirty, Sir John.”

“Fight filthy, Hook. Fight like the devil and send chivalry to hell. He’s no fool.”

“The devil?”

Sir John shook his head. “No, Raoul de Gaucourt. He commands the garrison.” Sir John nodded toward Harfleur. “He’s a gentleman, Hook, but he’s also a fighter. And he’s no fool. And if I were Raoul de Gaucourt I’d kick the shit out of us right now.”

And next day Raoul de Gaucourt did.

“Wake up, Nick!” It was Thomas Evelgold bellowing at him. The centenar slapped Hook’s shelter, shaking it so hard that scraps of dead leaves and pieces of turf fell onto Hook and Melisande. “God damn you, wake up!” Evelgold shouted again.

Hook opened his eyes to darkness. “Tom?” he called, but Evelgold had already moved on to wake other archers.

A second voice was shouting for the men to assemble. “Armor! Weapons! Hurry! Goddam now! I want you all here, now! Now!”

“What is it?” Melisande asked.

“Don’t know,” Hook said. He fumbled to find his mail coat. The stink of the leather lining was overpowering as pulled it over his head. He forced the unwieldy garment down his chest. “Sword belt?”

“Here,” Melisande was kneeling. The campfires were being revived and their flames reflected red from her wide open eyes.

Hook put on the short surcoat with its cross of Saint George, the badge that every man was required to wear in the siege-works. He pulled on his boots, the once good boots that he had bought in Soissons but which were now coming apart at the seams. He strapped on his belt, slid the bow from its cover, and snatched up an arrow bag. He had tied a long leather strap to the poleax and he slung that over his shoulder, then ducked into the night. “I’ll be back,” he called to Melisande.

“Casque!” she shouted after him. “Casque!” He reached back and took the helmet from her. He felt a sudden urge to tell her he loved her, but Melisande had disappeared back into the shelter and Hook said nothing. He sensed the night was ending. The stars were pale, which meant dawn would soon stain the sky above the obstinate city, but ahead of him there was tumult. The flames in the siege-works leaped higher, casting grotesque shadows across the broken ground.

“Come to me! Come to me!” Sir John was shouting beside the largest campfire. The archers were gathering quickly, but the men-at-arms, who needed more time to buckle on their plate armor, were slower to arrive. Sir John had chosen to forgo his expensive plate armor and was dressed like the archers in mail coat and jupon. “Evelgold! Hook! Magot! Candeler! Brutte!” Sir John called. Walter Magot, Piers Candeler, and Thomas Brutte were the other three ventenars.

“Here, Sir John!” Evelgold responded.

“Bastards have made a sally,” Sir John said urgently. That explained the shouting and the sound of steel clashing with steel that came from the forward trenches. Harfleur’s garrison had sallied out to attack the sow and gun-pits. “We have to kill the bastards,” Sir John said. “We’re going to attack straight down to the sow. Some of us are, but not you, Hook! You know the Savage?”

“Yes, Sir John,” Hook said, adjusting the buckle of his sword belt. The Savage was a catapult, a great wooden beast that hurled stones into Harfleur and, of all the siege engines, it lay closest to the sea at the right-hand end of the English lines.

“Take your men there,” Sir John said, “and work your way in toward the sow, got that?”

“Yes, Sir John,” Hook said again. He strung the bow by bracing one end on the ground and looping the cord over the upper nock.

“Then go! Go now!” Sir John snarled, “and kill the bastards!” He turned. “Where’s my banner! I want my banner! Bring me my goddamned banner!”

Hook led sixteen men now. It should have been twenty-three, but seven were either dead or ill. He wondered how seventeen men were supposed to fight their way along trenches and gun-pits swarming with an enemy who had sallied from the Leure Gate. It was evident the French had captured large stretches of the siege-works because, as Hook led his men down the southward track, he could see more fires springing up in the English gun-pits and the shapes of men scurrying in front of those flames. Groups of men-at-arms and archers crossed Hook’s path, all going toward the fighting. Hook could hear the clash of blades now.

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