Agincourt - Cornwell Bernard. Страница 37

Will of the Dale was obeying Hook. He was hurrying back along the crest and using his imitation of Sir John’s harsh voice to pull the archers back to where the big wagons waited on the road. Peter Goddington, confused by the mimicry, searched for Sir John and found Hook, Melisande, and Tom Scarlet instead. “What in God’s name is happening?” Goddington demanded angrily.

“French, sergeant,” Hook said, pointing down the western slope.

“Don’t be daft, Hook,” Goddington said, “there are no goddam French here.”

“I saw them,” Hook said. “Men-at-arms. They’re in armor and carrying swords.”

“They were our men, you fool,” Goddington insisted. “Probably a forage party.”

The centenar was so sure of himself that Hook was beginning to doubt what he had seen, and his uncertainty was increased because the horsemen, though they must have heard the shouting on the crest, had not reacted. He had expected the men-at-arms to spur up the slope and burst through the trees, but none had appeared. Yet he stuck to his story. “There were about twenty of them,” he told Goddington, “armored, and with strange livery. Melisande saw them too.”

The sergeant glanced at Melisande and decided her opinion was worthless. “I’ll have a look,” he said grudgingly. “Where did you say they were?”

“In the trees down that slope,” Hook said, pointing. “They’re not on the road. They’re in the trees, like they didn’t want to be seen.”

“You’d better not be dreaming,” the centenar grumbled and went down the slope.

“Where’s Matt?” Hook asked Tom Scarlet again.

“He went to look at the sea,” Tom Scarlet answered.

“Matt!” Hook bellowed, cupping his hands.

There was no answer. The warm wind sighed in the branches and chaffinches made a busy noise somewhere down the eastern slope. A gun sounded from the siege lines, the echo rumbling in the bowl of the hills and melding with the crash of the stone’s impact. Hook could not hear the clink of bridles or the thump of hooves and he wondered if he had imagined the horsemen. The shouting on the crest had ended, suggesting that the bemused archers must have assembled back at the wagons.

“We’d never seen the sea before,” Tom Scarlet said nervously, “not before we sailed here. Matt wanted to look again.”

“Matt!” Hook shouted again, but again there was no answer.

Peter Goddington had vanished over the crest’s lip. Hook gave the crossbow to Melisande and then uncased his bow, strung it, and put an arrow across the stave. He walked to the gully’s lip and gazed down into the ferns. Peter Goddington was alone in the gully. There was not a horseman in sight and the centenar looked up and gave Hook a glance of pure disgust. “Nothing here, you fool,” he shouted, and just then Hook saw the two horsemen come from the trees on the right.

“Behind you!” he shouted, and Goddington began to run up the slope as Hook raised the bow, hauled the cord back and loosed just as the man-at-arms nearest the centenar swerved left. The arrow, a bodkin, glanced off the espalier that armored the man’s shoulder. The sword chopped down and Hook, as he pulled another arrow from the bag, saw blood bright and sudden in the glowing green woodland, he saw Peter Goddington’s head turn red, saw him stumble as the second Frenchman, his sword held rigid as a lance, took the centenar in the back. Goddington fell.

Hook loosed again. The white feathers streaked through shadow and sunlight and the bodkin head, shafted with oak, slammed through the second man’s breastplate and hurled him back in his tall saddle. More horsemen were coming now, spurring from the thick trees to put their horses at the slope, and Tom Scarlet was tugging at Hook’s arm. “Nick! Nick!”

And suddenly it was panic because there were more riders to their left, between them and the sea, and Hook seized Melisande’s sleeve and dragged her back. He had not seen that southernmost column, and Hook realized the French had come in at least two parties and he had seen only one, and he ran desperately, hearing the hooves loud and getting louder, and he dragged Melisande fast to one side, dodging like a hare pursued by hounds, but then a horseman galloped in front of him and slewed about in a slithering flurry of leaf mold. Hook twisted to his left to find refuge by the bole of a great hollow oak. It was really no refuge at all, because he was cornered now, and still more horsemen came and a rider laughed from his saddle as the men-at-arms surrounded Melisande and the two archers.

“Matt!” Tom said, and Hook saw that Matthew Scarlet was already a prisoner. A Frenchman in blue and green livery had him by his jacket’s collar, dragging him alongside his horse.

“Archers,” a horseman said. The word was the same in French and English, and there was no mistaking the pleasure with which the man spoke.

“Pere!” Melisande gasped. “Pere?”

And that was when Hook saw the falcon stooping against the sun. The livery was newly embroidered and bright, almost as bright as the sword blade that reached toward him. The blade came within a hand’s breadth of his throat, then suddenly stopped. The rider, sitting straight-legged in his destrier’s saddle, stared down at Hook. The haunch of a roe deer, newly killed, hung from his saddle’s pommel and its blood had dripped onto the scale-armored foot of the horseman, who was Ghillebert, Seigneur de Lanferelle, the lord of hell.

He was a lord in splendor, mounted on a magnificent stallion and wearing plate armor that shone like the sun. He alone among the horsemen was bareheaded so that his long black hair hung sleek almost to his waist. His face was like polished metal, hard edged, bronze dark, with a hawk’s nose and hooded eyes that showed amusement as he stared first at Hook who was trapped by the sword blade, then at Melisande who had raised the cocked crossbow. If Lanferelle was astonished at discovering his daughter in a high Norman wood he did not show it. He offered her a flicker of a wry smile, then said something in French and the girl fumbled in the pouch and took out a bolt that she laid in the weapon’s groove. Ghillebert, Lord of Lanferelle, could easily have stopped her, but he merely smiled again as the now loaded weapon was raised once more to point at his face. He spoke, much too fast for Hook to understand, and Melisande answered just as fast, but passionately.

There was a shout from behind Hook, far behind, from where the road dropped to the English camp. The Lord of Lanferelle gestured to his men, gave an order, and they rode toward the shout. Half of the men, who numbered eighteen, wore the livery of the hawk and sun, the rest had the same blue and green livery as the man holding Matt Scarlet prisoner, and that man, together with a squire wearing Lanferelle’s badge were the only ones who stayed with le Seigneur d’Enfer.

“Three English archers,” Lanferelle spoke in English suddenly, and Hook remembered how this Frenchman had learned English when he was a prisoner waiting for his ransom to be collected, “three goddam archers, and I give gold to my men for bringing me the fingers of goddam archers.” Lanferelle grinned suddenly, his teeth very white against his sun-darkened skin. “There are fingerless peasants all across Normandy and Picardy because my men cheat.” He seemed proud of that, because he gave a sudden braying laugh. “You know she is my daughter?”

“I know,” Hook said.

“She’s the prettiest of them! I have nine that I know of, but only one from my wife. But this one,” he looked at Melisande who still held the crossbow on him, “this one I thought to protect from the world.”

“I know,” Hook said again.

“She was supposed to pray for my soul,” Lanferelle said, “but it seems I must breed other daughters if my soul is to be saved.”

Melisande spat some fast words that only made Lanferelle smile more. “I put you in the convent,” he said, still speaking English, “because you were too pretty to be humped by some sweaty peasant and too ill-born to be married to a gentleman. But now it seems you found the peasant anyway,” he gave Hook a derisive glance, “and the fruit is picked, eh? But picked or not,” he said, “you are still my possession.”