_{PART THREE}

To the River of Swords

NINE

There were to be no heavy wagons taken on the march. Instead the baggage would be carried by men, packhorses, and light carts. “We have to travel fast,” Sir John explained.

“It’s pride,” Father Christopher told Hook later, “nothing but pride.”

“Pride?”

“The king can’t just crawl back to England with nothing but Harfleur to show for his money! He has to do more than merely kick the French dog, he feels a need to pull its tail as well.”

The French dog did appear to be sleeping. Reports said the enemy army grew ever larger, but it showed no sign of stirring from around Rouen, and so the King of England had decided he would show Christendom that he could march from Harfleur to Calais with impunity. “It isn’t that far,” Sir John told his men, “maybe a week’s march.”

“And what do we gain from a week’s march through France?” Hook asked Father Christopher.

“Nothing,” the priest said bluntly.

“So why do it?”

“To show that we can. To show that the French are helpless.”

“And we travel without the big wagons?”

Father Christopher grinned. “We don’t want the helpless French to catch us, do we? That would be a disaster, young Hook! So we can’t take two hundred heavy wains with us, that would slow us down far too much, so it will be horses, spurs and the devil take the hindmost.”

“This is important!” Sir John had told his men. He had stormed into the Paon’s taproom and hammered one of the barrels with the hilt of his sword. “Are you awake? Are you listening? You take food for eight days! And all the arrows you can carry! You take weapons, armor, arrows, and food, and nothing else! If I see any man carrying anything other than weapons, armor, arrows, and food I’ll shove that useless baggage down his goddam gullet and pull it out of his goddam arse! We have to travel fast!”

“It all happened before,” Father Christopher told Hook next morning.

“Before?”

“You don’t know your history, Hook?”

“I know my grandfather was murdered, and my father too.”

“I do so love a happy family,” the priest said, “but think back to your great-grandfather’s time, when Edward was king. The third Edward. He was here in Normandy and decided to make a quick march to Calais, only he got trapped halfway.”

“And died?”

“Oh, good God, no, he beat the French! You’ve surely heard of Crécy?”

“Oh, I’ve heard of Crécy!” Hook said. Every archer knew of Crécy, the battle where the bowmen of England had cut down the nobility of France.

“So you know it was a glorious battle, Hook, in which God favored the English, but God’s favor is a fickle thing.”

“Are you telling me He’s not on our side?”

“I’m telling you that God is on the side of whoever wins, Hook.”

Hook considered that for a moment. He was sharpening arrowheads, slithering the bodkins and broadheads against a stone. He thought of all the tales he had heard as a child when old men had spoken of the arrow-storms of Crécy and Poitiers, then flourished a bodkin at Father Christopher. “If we meet the French,” he said stoutly, “we’ll win. We’ll punch these through their armor, father.”

“I have a grievous suspicion that the king agrees with you,” the priest said gently. “He really does believe God is on his side, but his brother evidently does not.”

“Which brother?” Hook asked. The Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Gloucester were both with the army.

“Clarence,” Father Christopher said. “He’s sailing home.”

Hook frowned at that news. The duke, according to some men, was an even better soldier than his older brother. Hook inspected a bodkin. Most of the long narrow head was dark with rust, but the point was now shining metal and wickedly sharp. He tested it by pricking the ball of his hand, then wet his fingers and smoothed out the fledging. “Why’s he going?”

“I suspect he disapproves of his brother’s decision,” Father Christopher said blandly. “Officially, of course, the duke is ill, but he looked remarkably well for an ailing man. And, of course, if Henry is killed, God forbid, Clarence will become King Thomas.”

“Our Harry won’t die,” Hook said fiercely.

“He very well might if the French catch us,” the priest said tartly, “but even our Henry has listened to advice. He was told to go home, he wanted to march to Paris, but he’s settled for Calais instead. And with God’s help, Hook, we should reach Calais long before the French can reach us.”

“You make it sound as if we’re running away.”

“Not quite,” the priest said, “but almost. Think of your lovely Melisande.”

Hook frowned, puzzled. “Melisande?”

“The French are gathered at her bellybutton, Hook, and we are perched on her right nipple. What we plan to do is run to her left nipple and hope to God the French don’t make it to her cleavage before us.”

“And if they do?”

“Then the cleavage will become the valley of the shadow of death,” Father Christopher said, “so pray that we march fast and that the French go on sleeping.”

“You can’t be fussy!” Sir John had told his archers in the taproom. “We can’t pack arrows in barrels, we don’t have the carts to carry barrels! And you can’t use discs! So bundle them, bundle them tight!”

Bundled arrows suffered from crushed fledgings, and crushed fledgings made arrows inaccurate, but there was no choice but to bind the arrows in tight sheaves that could be hung from a saddle or across a packhorse’s back. It took two days to tie the sheaves, for the king was demanding that every available arrow be carried on the journey and that meant carrying hundreds of thousands of arrows. As many as possible were heaped on the light farm carts that would accompany the army, but there were not enough such vehicles, so even men-at-arms were ordered to tie the bundles behind their saddles. There were just five thousand archers marching to Calais and in one minute those men were capable of shooting sixty or seventy thousand arrows, and no battle was ever won in a minute. “If we take every arrow we’ve got, there still won’t be enough,” Thomas Evelgold grumbled, “and then we’ll be throwing rocks at the bastards.”

A garrison was left at Harfleur. It was a strong force of over three hundred men-at-arms and almost a thousand archers, though it was short of horses because the king demanded that the garrison give up every beast except the knights’ war-trained destriers. The horses were needed to carry arrows. The new defenders of Harfleur were left perilously short of arrows themselves, but new ones were expected to arrive any day from England where foresters cut ash shafts, blacksmiths forged bodkins and broadheads, and fledgers bound on the goose feathers.

“We will march swiftly!” a priest with a booming voice shouted. It was the day before the army marched and the priest was visiting every street in Harfleur with a parchment on which the king’s orders had been written. The priest’s job was to make certain every man understood the king’s commands. “There will be no straggling! Above all, the property of the church is sacred! Any man who plunders church property will be hanged! God is with us, and we march to show that by His grace we are the masters of France!”

“You heard him!” Sir John shouted as the priest walked on. “Keep your thieving hands off church property! Don’t rape nuns! God doesn’t like it, and nor do I!”

That night, in the church of Saint Martin, Father Christopher made Hook and Melisande man and wife. Melisande cried and Hook, as he knelt and gazed at the candles guttering on the altar, wished Saint Crispinian would speak to him, but the saint said nothing. He wished he had thought to summon his brother to the church, but there had been no opportunity. Father Christopher had simply insisted that it was time Hook made Melisande his wife and so had taken them to the broken-spired church. “God be with you,” the priest said when the brief ceremony was done.