Loe raamatut: «Azincourt»

Prologue

On a winter’s day in 1413, just before Christmas, Nicholas Hook decided to commit murder.

It was a cold day. There had been a hard frost overnight and the midday sun had failed to melt the white from the grass. There was no wind so the whole world was pale, frozen and still when Hook saw Tom Perrill in the sunken lane that led from the high woods to the mill pastures.

Nick Hook, nineteen years old, moved like a ghost. He was a forester and even on a day when the slightest footfall could sound like cracking ice he moved silently. Now he went upwind of the sunken lane where Perrill had one of Lord Slayton’s draught horses harnessed to the felled trunk of an elm. Perrill was dragging the tree to the mill so he could make new blades for the water wheel. He was alone and that was unusual because Tom Perrill rarely went far from home without his brother or some other companion, and Hook had never seen Tom Perrill this far from the village without his bow slung on his shoulder.

Nick Hook stopped at the edge of the trees in a place where holly bushes hid him. He was one hundred paces from Perrill, who was cursing because the ruts in the lane had frozen hard and the great elm trunk kept catching on the jagged track and the horse was baulking. Perrill had beaten the animal bloody, but the whipping had not helped and Perrill was just standing now, switch in hand, swearing at the unhappy beast.

Hook took an arrow from the bag hanging at his side and checked that it was the one he wanted. It was a broadhead, deep-tanged, with a blade designed to cut through a deer’s body, an arrow made to slash open arteries so that the animal would bleed to death if Hook missed the heart, though he rarely did miss. At eighteen years old he had won the three counties’ match, beating older archers famed across half England, and at one hundred paces he never missed.

He laid the arrow across the bowstave. He was watching Perrill because he did not need to look at the arrow or the bow. His left thumb trapped the arrow, and his right hand slightly stretched the cord so that it engaged in the small horn-reinforced nock at the arrow’s feathered end. He raised the stave, his eyes still on the miller’s eldest son.

He hauled back the cord with no apparent effort though most men who were not archers could not have pulled the bowstring halfway. He drew the cord all the way to his right ear.

Perrill had turned to stare across the mill pastures where the river was a winding streak of silver under the winter-bare willows. He was wearing boots, breeches, a jerkin and a deerskin coat and he had no idea that his death was a few heartbeats away.

Hook released. It was a smooth release, the hemp cord leaving his thumb and two fingers without so much as a tremor.

The arrow flew true. Hook tracked the grey feathers, watching as the steel-tipped tapered ash shaft sped towards Perrill’s heart. He had sharpened the wedge-shaped blade and knew it would slice through deerskin as if it were cobweb.

Nick Hook hated the Perrill family, just as the Perrills hated the Hooks. The feud went back two generations, to when Tom Perrill’s grandfather had killed Hook’s grandfather in the village tavern by stabbing him through the eye with a poker. The old Lord Slayton had declared it a fair fight and refused to punish the miller, and ever since the Hooks had tried to get revenge.

They never had. Hook’s father had been kicked to death in the yearly football match and no one had ever discovered who had killed him, though everyone knew it must have been the Perrills. The ball had been kicked into the rushes beyond the manor orchard and a dozen men had chased after it, but only eleven came out. The new Lord Slayton had laughed at the idea of calling the death murder. ‘If you hanged a man for killing in a game of football,’ he had said, ‘then you’ll hang half England!’

Hook’s father had been a shepherd. He left a pregnant widow and two sons, and the widow died within two months of her husband’s death as she gave birth to a stillborn daughter. She died on the feast day of Saint Nicholas, which was Nick Hook’s thirteenth birthday, and his grandmother said the coincidence proved that Nick was cursed. She tried to lift the curse with her own magic. She stabbed him with an arrow, driving the point deep into his thigh, then told him to kill a deer with the arrow and the curse would go away. Hook had poached one of Lord Slayton’s hinds, killing it with the bloodstained arrow, but the curse had remained. The Perrills lived and the feud went on. A fine apple tree in the garden of Hook’s grandmother had died, and she insisted it had been old mother Perrill who had blighted the fruit. ‘The Perrills always have been putrid turd-sucking bastards,’ his grandmother said. She put the evil eye on Tom Perrill and on his younger brother, Robert, but old mother Perrill must have used a counter-spell because neither fell ill. The two goats that Hook kept on the common disappeared, and the village reckoned it had to be wolves, but Hook knew it was the Perrills. He killed their cow in revenge, but it was not the same as killing them. ‘It’s your job to kill them,’ his grandmother insisted to Nick, but he had never found the opportunity. ‘May the devil make you spit shit,’ she cursed him, ‘and then take you to hell.’ She threw him from her home when he was sixteen. ‘Go and starve, you bastard,’ she snarled. She was going mad by then and there was no arguing with her, so Nick Hook left home and might well have starved except that was the year he came first in the six villages’ competition, putting arrow after arrow into the distant mark.

Lord Slayton made Nick a forester, which meant he had to keep his lordship’s table heavy with venison. ‘Better you kill them legally,’ Lord Slayton had remarked, ‘than be hanged for poaching.’

Now, on Saint Winebald’s Day, just before Christmas, Nick Hook watched his arrow fly towards Tom Perrill.

It would kill, he knew it.

The arrow flew true, dipping slightly between the high, frost-bright hedges. Tom Perrill had no idea it was coming. Nick Hook smiled.

Then the arrow fluttered.

A fledging had come loose, its glue and binding must have given way and the arrow veered leftwards to slice down the horse’s flank and lodge in its shoulder. The horse whinnied, reared and lunged forward, jerking the great elm trunk loose from the frozen ruts.

Tom Perrill turned and stared up at the high wood, then understood a second arrow could follow the first and so turned again and ran after the horse.

Nick Hook had failed again. He was cursed.

Lord Slayton slumped in his chair. He was in his forties, a bitter man who had been crippled at Shrewsbury by a sword thrust in the spine and so would never fight another battle. He stared sourly at Nick Hook. ‘Where were you on Saint Winebald’s Day?’

‘When was that, my lord?’ Hook asked with apparent innocence.

‘Bastard,’ Lord Slayton spat, and the steward struck Hook from behind with the bone handle of a horsewhip.

‘Don’t know which day that was, my lord,’ Hook said stubbornly.

‘Two days ago,’ Sir Martin said. He was Lord Slayton’s brother-in-law and priest to the manor and village. He was no more a knight than Hook was, but Lord Slayton insisted he was called ‘Sir’ Martin in recognition of his high birth.

‘Oh!’ Hook pretended a sudden enlightenment. ‘I was coppicing the ash under Beggar’s Hill, my lord.’

‘Liar,’ Lord Slayton said flatly. William Snoball, steward and chief archer to his lordship, struck Hook again, slashing the whip’s butt hard across the back of the forester’s skull. Blood trickled down Hook’s scalp.

‘On my honour, lord,’ Hook lied earnestly.

‘The honour of the Hook family,’ Lord Slayton said drily before looking at Hook’s younger brother, Michael, who was seventeen. ‘Where were you?’

‘I was thatching the church porch, my lord,’ Michael said.

‘He was,’ Sir Martin confirmed. The priest, lanky and gangling in his stained black robe, bestowed a grimace that was supposed to be a smile on Nick Hook’s younger brother. Everyone liked Michael. Even the Perrills seemed to exempt him from the hatred they felt for the rest of the Hook tribe. Michael was fair while his brother was dark, and his disposition was sunny while Nick Hook was saturnine.

The Perrill brothers stood next to the Hook brothers. Thomas and Robert were tall, thin and loose-jointed with deep sunk eyes, long noses and jutting chins. Their resemblance to Sir Martin the priest was unmistakable and the village, with the deference due to a gently-born churchman, accepted the pretence that they were the miller’s sons while still treating them with respect. The Perrill family had unspoken privileges because everyone understood that the brothers could call on Sir Martin’s help whenever they felt threatened.

And Tom Perrill had not just been threatened, he had almost been killed. The grey-fledged arrow had missed him by a hand’s breadth and that arrow now lay on the table in the manor hall. Lord Slayton pointed at the arrow and nodded to his steward who crossed to the table. ‘It’s not one of ours, my lord,’ William Snoball said after examining the arrow.

‘The grey feathers, you mean?’ Lord Slayton asked.

‘No one near here uses grey-goose,’ Snoball said reluctantly, with a churlish glance at Nick Hook, ‘not for fledging. Not for anything!’

Lord Slayton gazed at Nick Hook. He knew the truth. Everyone in the hall knew the truth, except perhaps Michael who was a trusting soul. ‘Whip him,’ Sir Martin suggested.

Hook stared at the tapestry hanging beneath the hall’s gallery. It showed a hunter thrusting a spear into a boar’s guts. A woman, wearing nothing but a wisp of translucent cloth, was watching the hunter, who was dressed in a loincloth and a helmet. The oak beams supporting the gallery had been turned black by a hundred years of smoke.

‘Whip him,’ the priest said again, ‘or cut off his ears.’

Hook lowered his eyes to look at Lord Slayton and wondered, for the thousandth time, whether he was looking at his own father. Hook had the strong-boned Slayton face, the same heavy forehead, the same wide mouth, the same black hair and the same dark eyes. He had the same height, the same bodily strength that had been his lordship’s before the rebel sword had twisted in his back and forced him to use the leather-padded crutches leaning on his chair. His lordship returned the gaze, betraying nothing. ‘This feud will end,’ he finally said, still staring at Hook. ‘You understand me? There will be no more killing.’ He pointed at Hook. ‘If any of the Perrill family dies, Hook, then I will kill you and your brother. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘And if a Hook dies,’ his lordship turned his gaze on Tom Perrill, ‘then you and your brother will hang from the oak.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ Perrill said.

‘Murder would need to be proven,’ Sir Martin interjected. He spoke suddenly, his voice indignant. The gangling priest often seemed to be living in another world, his thoughts far away, then he would jerk his attention back to wherever he was and his words would blurt out as if catching up with lost time. ‘Proven,’ he said again, ‘proven.’

‘No!’ Lord Slayton contradicted his brother-in-law, and to emphasise it he slapped the wooden arm of his chair. ‘If any one of you four dies I’ll hang the rest of you! I don’t care! If one of you slips into the mill’s leet and drowns I’ll call it murder. You understand me? I will not have this feud one moment longer!’

‘There’ll be no murder, my lord,’ Tom Perrill said humbly.

Lord Slayton looked back to Hook, waiting for the same assurance, but Nick Hook said nothing. ‘A whipping will teach him obedience, my lord,’ Snoball suggested.

‘He’s been whipped!’ Lord Slayton said. ‘When was the last time, Hook?’

‘Last Michaelmas, my lord.’

‘And what did you learn from that?’

‘That Master Snoball’s arm is weakening, lord,’ Hook said.

A stifled snigger made Hook look upwards to see her ladyship was watching from the shadows of the gallery. She was childless. Her brother, the priest, whelped one bastard after another, while Lady Slayton was bitter and barren. Hook knew she had secretly visited his grandmother in search of a remedy, but for once the old woman’s sorcery had failed to produce a baby.

Snoball had growled angrily at Hook’s impudence, but Lord Slayton had betrayed his amusement with a sudden grin. ‘Out!’ he commanded now, ‘all of you! Get out, except for you, Hook. You stay.’

Lady Slayton watched as the men left the hall, then turned and vanished into whatever chamber lay beyond the gallery. Her husband stared at Nick Hook without speaking until, at last, he gestured at the grey-feathered arrow on the oak table. ‘Where did you get it, Hook?’

‘Never seen it before, my lord.’

‘You’re a liar, Hook. You’re a liar, a thief, a rogue and a bastard, and I’ve no doubt you’re a murderer too. Snoball’s right. I should whip you till your bones are bare. Or maybe I should just hang you. That would make the world a better place, a Hookless world.’

Hook said nothing. He just looked at Lord Slayton. A log cracked in the fire, showering sparks.

‘But you’re also the best goddamned archer I’ve ever seen,’ Lord Slayton went on grudgingly. ‘Give me the arrow.’

Hook fetched the grey-fledged arrow and gave it to his lordship. ‘The fledging came loose in flight?’ Lord Slayton asked.

‘Looks like it, my lord.’

‘You’re not an arrow-maker, are you, Hook?’

‘Well I make them, lord, but not as well as I should. I can’t get the shafts to taper properly.’

‘You need a good drawknife for that,’ Lord Slayton said, tugging at the fledging. ‘So where did you get the arrow,’ he asked, ‘from a poacher?’

‘I killed one last week, lord,’ Hook said carefully.

‘You’re not supposed to kill them, Hook, you’re supposed to bring them to the manor court so I can kill them.’

‘Bastard had shot a hind in the Thrush Wood,’ Hook explained, ‘and he ran away so I put a broadhead in his back and buried him up beyond Cassell’s Hill.’

‘Who was he?’

‘A vagabond, my lord. I reckon he was just wandering through, and he didn’t have anything on him except his bow.’

‘A bow and a bag filled with grey-fledged arrows,’ his lordship said. ‘You’re lucky the horse didn’t die. I’d have hung you for that.’

‘Caesar was barely scratched, my lord,’ Hook said dismissively, ‘nothing but a tear in his hide.’

‘And how would you know if you weren’t there?’

‘I hear things in the village, my lord,’ Hook said.

‘I hear things too, Hook,’ Lord Slayton said, ‘and you’re to leave the Perrills alone! You hear me? Leave them alone!’

Hook did not believe in much, but he had somehow persuaded himself that the curse that lay on his life would be lifted if only he could kill the Perrills. He was not quite sure what the curse was, unless it was the uncomfortable suspicion that life must hold more than the manor offered. Yet when he thought of escaping Lord Slayton’s service he was assailed by a gloomy foreboding that some unseen and incomprehensible disaster awaited him. That was the tenuous shape of the curse and he did not know how to lift it other than by murder, but nevertheless he nodded obediently. ‘I hear you, my lord.’

‘You hear and you obey,’ his lordship said. He tossed the arrow onto the fire where it lay for a moment, then burst into bright flame. A waste of a good broadhead, Hook thought. ‘Sir Martin doesn’t like you, Hook,’ Lord Slayton said in a lower voice. He rolled his eyes upward and Hook understood that his lordship was asking whether his wife was still in the gallery. Hook gave a barely perceptible shake of his head. ‘You know why he hates you?’ his lordship asked.

‘Not sure he likes many people, lord,’ Hook answered evasively.

Lord Slayton stared at Hook broodingly. ‘And you’re right about Will Snoball,’ he finally said, ‘he’s weakening. We all get old, Hook, and I’ll be needing a new centenar. You understand me?’

A centenar was the man who commanded a company of archers and William Snoball had held the job for as long as Hook remembered. Snoball was also the manor’s steward, and the two offices had made him the richest of all Lord Slayton’s men. Hook nodded. ‘I understand, lord,’ he muttered.

‘Sir Martin believes Tom Perrill should be my next centenar. And he fears I’ll appoint you, Hook. I can’t imagine why he would think that, can you?’

Hook looked into his lordship’s face. He was tempted to ask about his mother and how well his lordship had known her, but he resisted. ‘No, lord,’ he said humbly instead.

‘So when you go to London, Hook, tread carefully. Sir Martin will accompany you.’

‘London!’

‘I have a summons,’ Lord Slayton explained. ‘I’m required to send my archers to London. Ever been to London?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘Well, you’re going. I don’t know why, the summons doesn’t say. But my archers are going because the king commands it. And maybe it’s war? I don’t know. But if it is war, Hook, then I don’t want my men killing each other. For God’s sake, Hook, don’t make me hang you.’

‘I’ll try not, my lord.’

‘Now go. Tell Snoball to come in. Go.’

Hook went.

It was a January day. It was still cold. The sky was low and twilight dark, though it was only mid-morning. At dawn there had been flurries of snow, but it had not settled. There was frost on the thatched roofs and skins of cat ice on the few puddles that had not been trampled into mud. Nick Hook, long-legged and broad-chested and dark-haired and scowling, sat outside the tavern with seven companions, including his brother and the two Perrill brothers. Hook wore knee-high boots with spurs, two pairs of breeches to keep out the cold, a woollen shirt, a padded leather jerkin and a short linen tunic, which was blazoned with Lord Slayton’s golden crescent moon and three golden stars. All eight men wore leather belts with pouches, long daggers and swords, and all wore the same livery, though a stranger would need to look hard to discern the moon and stars because the colours had faded and the tunics were dirty.

No one did look hard, because armed men in livery meant trouble. And these eight men were archers. They carried neither bows nor arrow bags, but the breadth of their chests showed these were men who could draw the cord of a war bow a full yard back and make it look easy. They were bowmen, and they were one cause of the fear that pervaded London’s streets. The fear was as pungent as the stench of sewage, as prevalent as the smell of woodsmoke. House doors were closed. Even the beggars had vanished, and the few folk who walked the city were among those who had provoked the fear, yet even they chose to pass on the farther side of the street from the eight archers.

‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ Nick Hook broke the silence.

‘Go to church if you want to say prayers, you bastard,’ Tom Perrill said.

‘I’ll shit in your mother’s face first,’ Hook snarled.

‘Quiet, you two,’ William Snoball intervened.

‘We shouldn’t be here,’ Hook growled. ‘London’s not our place!’

‘Well, you are here,’ Snoball said, ‘so stop bleating.’

The tavern stood on a corner where a narrow street led into a wide market square. The inn’s sign, a carved and painted model of a bull, hung from a massive beam that was anchored in the tavern’s gable and reached out to a stout post sunk in the marketplace. Other archers were visible around the square, men in different liveries, all fetched to London by their lords, though where those lords were no one knew. Two priests carrying bundles of parchments hurried by on the street’s far side. Somewhere deeper in the city a bell started to toll. One of the priests glanced at the archers wearing the moon and stars, then almost tripped as Tom Perrill spat.

‘What in Christ’s name are we doing here?’ Robert Perrill asked.

‘Christ is not telling us,’ Snoball answered sourly, ‘but I am assured we do His work.’

Christ’s work consisted of guarding the corner where the street joined the marketplace, and the archers had been ordered to let no man or woman pass them by, either into the market square or out of it. That command did not apply to priests, nor to mounted gentry, but only to the common folk, and those common folk possessed the wisdom to stay indoors. Seven hand-drawn carts had come down the street, pulled by ragged men and loaded with firewood, barrels, stones and long timbers, but the carts had been accompanied by mounted men-at-arms who wore the royal livery and the archers had stayed still and silent while they passed.

A plump girl with a scarred face brought a jug of ale from the tavern. She filled the archers’ pots and her face showed nothing as Snoball groped beneath her heavy skirts. She waited till he had finished, then held out a hand.

‘No, no, darling,’ Snoball said, ‘I did you a favour so you should reward me.’ The girl turned and went indoors. Michael, Hook’s younger brother, stared at the table and Tom Perrill sneered at the young man’s embarrassment, but said nothing. There was little joy to be had in provoking Michael, who was too good-hearted to take offence.

Hook watched the royal men-at-arms who had stopped the handcarts in the centre of the marketplace where two long stakes were stood upright in two big barrels. The stakes were being fixed in place by packing the barrels with stones and gravel. A man-at-arms tested one of the stakes, trying to tip or dislodge it, but the work had evidently been well done, for he could not shift the tall timber. He jumped down and the labourers began stacking bundles of firewood around the twin barrels.

‘Royal firewood,’ Snoball said, ‘burns brighter.’

‘Does it really?’ Michael Hook asked. He tended to believe everything he was told and waited eagerly for an answer, but the other archers ignored his question.

‘At last,’ Tom Perrill said instead, and Hook saw a small crowd emerging from a church at the far side of the marketplace. The crowd was composed of ordinary-looking folk, but it was surrounded by soldiers, monks and priests, and one of those priests now headed towards the tavern called the Bull.

‘Here’s Sir Martin,’ Snoball said, as if his companions would not recognise the priest who, as he drew nearer, grinned. Hook felt a tremor of hatred as he saw the eel-thin Sir Martin with his loping stride, lopsided face and his strange, intense eyes that some thought looked beyond this world to the next, though opinion varied whether Sir Martin gazed at hell or heaven. Hook’s grandmother had no doubts. ‘He was bitten by the devil’s dog,’ she liked to say, ‘and if he hadn’t been born gentry he’d have been hanged by now.’

The archers stood with grudging respect as the priest drew near. ‘God’s work waits on you, boys,’ Sir Martin greeted them. His dark hair was grey at the sides and thin on top. He had not shaved for some days and his long chin was covered in white stubble that reminded Hook of frost. ‘We need a ladder,’ Sir Martin said, ‘and Sir Edward’s bringing the ropes. Nice to see the gentry working, isn’t it? We need a long ladder. There has to be one somewhere.’

‘A ladder,’ Will Snoball said, as if he had never heard of such a thing.

‘A long one,’ Sir Martin said, ‘long enough to reach that beam.’ He jerked his head at the sign of the bull over their heads. ‘Long, long.’ He said the last words distractedly, as if he were already forgetting what business he was about.

‘Look for a ladder,’ Will Snoball told two of the archers, ‘a long one.’

‘No short ladders for God’s work,’ Sir Martin said, snapping his attention back to the archers. He rubbed his thin hands together and grimaced at Hook. ‘You look ill, Hook,’ he added happily, as if hoping Nick Hook were dying.

‘The ale tastes funny,’ Hook said.

‘That’s because it’s Friday,’ the priest said, ‘and you should abstain from ale on Wednesdays and Fridays. Your name-saint, the blessed Nicholas, rejected his mother’s teats on Wednesdays and Fridays, and there’s a lesson in that! There can be no pleasures for you, Hook, on Wednesdays and Fridays. No ale, no joy and no tits, that is your fate for ever. And why, Hook, why?’ Sir Martin paused and his long face twisted in a malevolent grin, ‘Because you have supped on the sagging tits of evil! I will not have mercy on her children, the scriptures say, because their mother hath played the harlot!’

Tom Perrill sniggered. ‘What are we doing, father?’ Will Snoball asked tiredly.

‘God’s work, Master Snoball, God’s holy work. Go to it.’

A ladder was found as Sir Edward Derwent crossed the market square with four ropes looped about his broad shoulders. Sir Edward was a man-at-arms and wore the same livery as the archers, though his jupon was cleaner and its colours were brighter. He was a squat, thick-chested man with a face disfigured at the battle of Shrewsbury where a poleaxe had ripped open his helmet, crushed a cheekbone and sliced off an ear. ‘Bell ropes,’ he explained, tossing the heavy coils onto the ground. ‘Need them tied to the beam, and I’m not climbing any ladder.’ Sir Edward commanded Lord Slayton’s men-at-arms and he was as respected as he was feared. ‘Hook, you do it,’ Sir Edward ordered.

Hook climbed the ladder and tied the bell ropes to the beam. He used the knot with which he would have looped a hempen cord about a bowstave’s nock, though the ropes, being thicker, were much harder to manipulate. When he was done he shinned down the last rope to show that it was tied securely.

‘Let’s get this done and over,’ Sir Edward said sourly, ‘and then maybe we can leave this goddamned place. Whose ale is this?’

‘Mine, Sir Edward,’ Robert Perrill said.

‘Mine now,’ Sir Edward said, and drained the pot. He was dressed in a mail coat over a leather jerkin, all of it covered with the starry jupon. A sword hung at his waist. There was nothing elaborate about the weapon. The blade, Hook knew, was undecorated, the hilt was plain steel, and the handle was two grips of walnut bolted to the tang. The sword was a tool of Sir Edward’s trade, and he had used it to batter down the rebel whose poleaxe had taken half his face.

The small crowd had been herded by soldiers and priests into the centre of the marketplace where most of them knelt and prayed. There were maybe sixty of them, men and women, young and old. ‘Can’t burn them all,’ Sir Martin said regretfully, ‘so we’re sending most to hell at the rope’s end.’

‘If they’re heretics,’ Sir Edward grumbled, ‘they should all be burned.’

‘If God wished that,’ Sir Martin said with some asperity, ‘then God would have provided sufficient firewood.’

More people were appearing now. Fear still pervaded the city, but folk somehow sensed that the greatest moment of danger was over, and so they came to the marketplace and Sir Martin ordered the archers to let them pass. ‘They should see this for themselves,’ the priest explained. There was a sullenness in the gathering crowd, their sympathies plainly aligned with the prisoners and not the guards, though here and there a priest or friar preached an extemporary sermon to justify the day’s events. The doomed, the preachers explained, were enemies of Christ. They were weeds among the righteous wheat. They had been given a chance to repent, but had refused that mercy and so must face their eternal fate.