“One less Frenchman to kill in a battle,” Hook suggested.

Sir John smiled tiredly. “It’s a matter of honor, Hook.” He nodded toward a Frenchman who trotted less than a quarter-mile away. The man was quite alone and rode with an upright lance as an invitation for some Englishman to fight him. “He’s sworn to do some deed of great valor,” Sir John explained, “like killing me or another knight, and that’s a noble ambition.”

“It saves him from an arrow?” Hook responded dourly.

“Yes, Hook, it does. Let him live. He’s a brave man.”

More brave men approached that afternoon, but still no Englishmen responded, and so the Frenchmen became still bolder, riding close enough to recognize men they had met in tournaments across Europe. They chatted. There were maybe a dozen such French knights visible at any one time, and one of them, mounted on a tall and sprightly black horse that took the heavy soil with a high-stepping energy, spurred his way to the vanguard’s front. “Sir John!” the rider called. He was the Sire de Lanferelle, his long hair wet and lank.

“Lanferelle!”

“If I give you oats for your horse, you’ll match my lance?”

“If you give me oats,” Sir John called back, “my archers will eat!”

Lanferelle laughed. Sir John veered away from the road to ride beside the Frenchman and the two talked amicably. “They look like friends,” Melisande said.

“Maybe they are,” Hook suggested.

“And they will kill each other in battle?”

“Englishman!” It was Lanferelle who called to Hook and who now rode toward the archers. “Sir John says you married my daughter!”

“I did,” Hook said.

“And without my blessing,” Lanferelle said, sounding amused. He looked at Melisande. “You have the jupon I gave you?”

“Oui,” she said.

“Wear it,” her father said harshly, “if there’s a battle, wear it.”

“Because it will save me?” she asked bitterly. “The novice’s robe didn’t protect me in Soissons.”

“Damn Soissons, girl,” Lanferelle said, “and what happened there will happen to these men. They’re doomed!” He swept his arm to indicate the muddy, slow column. “The goddams are all doomed! I will take pleasure in saving you.”

“For what?”

“For whatever choice I make for you,” Lanferelle said. “You’ve tasted your freedom, and look where it has led you!” He smiled, his teeth surprisingly white. “You can come now? I shall take you away before we slaughter this army.”

“I stay with Nicholas,” she said.

“Then stay with the goddams,” Lanferelle said harshly, “and when your Nicholas is dead I shall take you away.” He wheeled his horse and, after a few more words with Sir John, rode south.

“The goddams?” Hook asked.

“It’s what the French call you English,” she said, then looked at Sir John. “Are we doomed?” she asked.

Sir John smiled ruefully. “It depends on whether their army catches us, and if it catches us, whether it can beat us. We’re still alive!”

“Will it catch us?” Melisande asked.

Sir John pointed north. “There was a small French army on the river’s northern bank,” he explained, “and they were keeping pace with us. They were making sure we couldn’t cross. They were driving us toward their bigger army. But here, my dear, the river curves north. A great curve! We’re cutting across country, but that smaller army has to ride all the way around and it will take them three or four days, and tomorrow we’ll be at the river and there’ll be no small army on the other side and if we find a ford or, God willing, a bridge, we’ll be across the Somme and riding for the taverns of Calais! We’ll go home!”

Yet each day they covered less ground. There was no grazing for the horses, and no oats, and every day more men dismounted to lead their weakening, tiring mounts. In the first week of the march the towns had given food to the passing army, but now the few small walled towns shut their gates and refused to offer any help. They knew the English could not spare the time to assault their ramparts, however decrepit, and so they watched the disconsolate column pass by and offered prayers that God would utterly destroy the weakened invaders.

And God’s displeasure was the last thing Henry dared risk, so that, on their last day on the plateau, the day before they would ride down into the valley of the Somme again, when a priest came to complain that an Englishman had stolen his church’s pyx, the king ordered the whole column to halt. Centenars and ventenars were commanded to search their men. The missing pyx, which was a copper-gilt box in which consecrated wafers were held, was evidently of little value, but the king was determined to find it. “Some poor bastard probably stole it to get the wafers,” Tom Scarlet suggested, “he ate the wafers and threw the pyx away.”

“Well, Hook?” Sir John demanded.

“None of us has it, Sir John.”

“One goddam pyx,” Sir John snarled, “a pox on the pyx, father!”

“If you say so, Sir John,” Father Christopher said.

“Give the French a chance to catch us because of one goddam pyx!”

“God will reward us if we discover the item,” Father Christopher suggested, “indeed, He has already lifted the rain!” It was true. Since the search had begun the rain had ended and a weak sun was struggling to clear the clouds and shine on the waterlogged land.

And then the pyx was found.

It had been hidden in the sleeve of an archer’s jerkin, a spare jerkin that he had evidently kept wrapped and tied to his horse’s pommel, though the archer himself claimed that he had seen neither jerkin nor pyx before. “They all claim innocence,” a royal chaplain told the king, “just hang him, sire.”

“We will hang him,” the king agreed vigorously, “and we’ll let every man see him hanged! This is what happens when you sin against God! Hang him!”

“No!” Hook protested.

Because the man being dragged to the tree where the king and his entourage waited was his brother Michael.

For whom the rope waited.

The king’s men dragged Michael to the base of the elm tree where Henry and his courtiers waited on horseback beside the country priest who had first complained about the theft of his pyx. The army, commanded to attend, was gathered in a vast circle, though few except those in the foremost ranks could see what happened. Two soldiers in mail coats half covered by the royal coat-of-arms had pinioned Michael Hook’s arms and were half pulling and half pushing him toward the king. They hardly needed to use force for Michael was going willingly enough. He just looked bemused.

“No!” Hook shouted.

“Shut your mouth,” Thomas Evelgold growled.

If the king heard Hook’s protest he showed no sign of it. His face was unmoving, hard-planed, shaven raw, implacable.

“He…” Hook began, intending to say his brother had not, could not, have stolen a pyx, but Evelgold turned fast and slammed his fist into Hook’s stomach, driving the wind from him.

“Next time, I break your jaw,” Evelgold said.

“My brother,” Hook panted, suddenly straining to draw breath.

“Quiet!” Sir John snarled from in front of his company.

“You offend God, you risk our whole campaign!” the king spoke to Michael, his voice like gravel. “How can we expect God to be on our side if we offend Him? You have put England itself at risk.”

“I didn’t steal it!” Michael pleaded.

“Whose company is he?” the king demanded.

Sir Edward Derwent stepped forward. “One of Lord Slayton’s archers, sire,” he said, bowing his graying head, “and I doubt, sire, that he is a thief.”

“The pyx was in his keeping?”

“It was found in his belongings, sire,” Sir Edward said carefully.

“The jerkin wasn’t mine, lord!” Michael said.

“You are certain the pyx was in his baggage?” the king asked Sir Edward, ignoring the fair-haired young archer who had dropped to his knees.