The horses thumped up an almost imperceptible rise and the landscape that Hook had held in his head revealed itself. He did not turn to the wood where the horseman was hidden, but kept going northward to cut the man off from the Somme. Perhaps the man had already ridden away? In all likelihood he was simply some local gentleman who wanted to watch the enemy pass, but the gentry knew more of what happened in their neighboring regions than the peasantry and that was why Sir John wanted to question the man.

Raker was tiring, blowing and fractious, and Hook curbed the horse. “Bows,” he said, uncasing his own and stringing it by supporting one end in his bucket stirrup.

“Thought we weren’t supposed to kill him,” Tom Scarlet said.

“If the bastard’s a gentleman,” Hook said, and he supposed the man was because he was mounted on horseback, “then he’ll be sword trained. If you come at him with a blade he’ll like as not slash your head off. But he won’t like facing an arrow, will he?” He locked an arrow on the stave with his left thumb.

He patted Raker’s neck, then kicked the horse forward again. Now they were coming at the wood from the road’s far side. He could see that Sir John had stayed on the slight crest, not wanting to spring the man out of his hiding place, but the lone Frenchman had scented trouble, or else he had simply watched for the approaching English long enough, because he suddenly broke cover and spurred his horse north toward the river. “God damn him,” Hook said.

Sir John saw the man ride away and immediately spurred forward with his men-at-arms, but the English horses were tired and the Frenchman’s mount was well rested. “They’ve no chance of catching him,” Scoyle said.

Hook ignored that pessimism. Instead he turned Raker and banged his heels back. The Frenchman was following the road that curved to the right and Hook could gallop across the chord of that curve. He knew he could not out-gallop the man and so stood no chance of catching him, but he did have a chance of getting close enough to use the bow. The man turned in his saddle and saw Hook and his men and slashed his spurs back, and Hook kicked as well and the hooves hammered the hard ground and Hook saw that the fugitive would be hidden by trees in a moment and so he hauled on Raker’s reins, pulled his feet from the stirrups, and threw himself out of the saddle. He stumbled, fell to one knee, and the bow was already rising in his left hand and he caught the string, nocked the arrow and pulled back.

“Too far,” Scoyle said, reining in his horse, “don’t waste a good arrow.”

“Much too far,” Michael agreed.

But the bow was huge and Hook did not think about his aim. He just watched the distant horseman, willed where he wanted the arrow to go, then hauled and released and the cord twanged and slashed against his unprotected wrist and the arrow fluttered a heartbeat before its fledging caught the air and tautened its flight.

“Tuppence says you’ll miss by twenty paces,” Tom Scarlet said.

The arrow drew its curve in the sky, its white fledging a diminishing flicker in the autumn light. The far horseman galloped, unaware of the broadhead that flew high before starting its hissing descent. It fell fast, plunging, losing its momentum, and the horseman turned again to watch for his pursuers and as he did so the barbed arrow slapped into his horse’s belly and sliced into blood and flesh. The horse twisted hard and sudden with the awful pain and Hook saw the man lose his balance and fall from the saddle.

“Sweet Jesu!” Michael said in pure admiration.

“Come on!” Hook gathered Raker’s reins and hauled himself into the saddle and kicked back before he had found the stirrups and for a moment he thought he would fall off himself, but he managed to thrust his right boot into the bucket and saw the Frenchman was remounting his horse. Hook had wounded the horse, not killed it, but the animal was bleeding because the broadhead was designed to rip and tear through flesh, and the harder the Frenchman rode the beast the more blood it would lose.

The horseman spurred his wounded mount to vanish among the trees and a moment later Hook was on the road and among the same trees and he saw the Frenchman was a hundred paces ahead and his horse was faltering, leaving a trail of blood. The man saw his pursuers and slid out of his saddle because his horse could go no farther. He turned to run into the woods and Hook shouted, “Non!”

He let Raker slow to a stop. Hook’s bow was drawn and there was another arrow on the string, and this arrow was aimed at the horseman who gave a resigned nod. He wore a sword, but no armor. His clothes, as Hook drew nearer, looked to be of fine quality; good broadcloth and a tight-woven linen shirt and expensive boots. He was a fine-looking man, perhaps thirty years old, with a wide face and a trimmed beard and pale green eyes that were fixed on the arrow’s head. “Just stay where you are,” Hook said. The man might not speak English, but he understood the message of the tensioned bow and its bodkin arrow, and so he obeyed, caressing the nose of his dying horse. The horse gave a pathetic whinny, then its forelegs crumpled and it fell onto the track. The man crouched and stroked, speaking softly to the dying beast.

“You almost let him get away, Hook!” Sir John shouted as he arrived.

“Nearly, Sir John.”

“So let’s see what the bastard knows,” Sir John said, and slid out of his saddle. “Someone kill that poor horse!” he demanded. “Put the animal out of its misery!”

The job was done with a poleax blow to the horse’s forehead, then Sir John talked with the prisoner. He treated the man with an exquisite politeness, and the Frenchman, in turn, was loquacious, but there was no denying that whatever he revealed was causing Sir John dismay. “I want a horse for Sir Jules,” Sir John turned on the archers with that demand. “He’s going to meet the king.”

Sir Jules was taken to the king and the army stopped.

The vanguard was only five miles from the ford at Blanchetaque, and Calais was just three days’ march north of that ford. In three days’ time, eight days after they had left Harfleur, the army should have marched through the gates of Calais and Henry would have been able to claim, if not a victory, at least a humiliation of the French. But that humiliation depended on crossing the wide tidal ford of Blanchetaque.

And the French were already there. Charles d’Albret, the Constable of France, was on the Somme’s northern bank, and the prisoner, who was in the constable’s service, described how the ford had been planted with sharpened stakes, and how six thousand men were waiting on the further bank to stop the English crossing.

“It can’t be done,” Sir John said bleakly that evening. “The bastards are there.”

The bastards had blocked the river and, as night fell, the clouded sky reflected the campfires of the French force that guarded the Blanchetaque ford. “The ford’s only crossable when the tide’s low,” Sir John explained, “and even then we can only advance twenty men abreast. And twenty men can’t fight off six thousand.”

No one spoke for a while, then Father Christopher asked the question that every man in Sir John’s company wanted to ask even though they dreaded the answer. “So what do we do, Sir John?”

“Find another ford, of course.”

“Where, pray?”

“Inland,” Sir John said grimly.

“We march toward the belly button,” Father Christopher said.

“We do what?” Sir John asked, staring as though the priest were mad.

“Nothing, Sir John, nothing!” Father Christopher said.

So now England’s army, with only enough food for three more days, must march deep into France to cross a river. And if they could not cross the river they would die, and if they did cross the river they might still die because going inland would take time, and time would give the French army the opportunity to wake from its slumber and march. The dash up the coast had failed and now Henry and his little army must plunge into France.