Agincourt - Cornwell Bernard. Страница 45

“Hold them!” Sir Edward’s voice bellowed from farther down the mine.

The barrels. Hook, momentarily free of enemies, turned and ran toward the mine entrance. He made it to where the shaft sloped gently up toward the surface, but there a foot tripped him and he sprawled heavily onto the chalk. He twisted aside and tried to climb to his feet, but a boot kicked him in the belly. Hook twisted again to see Tom and Robert Perrill standing over him.

“Quick,” Tom Perrill shouted at his brother.

Robert lifted a sword, point downward, aimed at Hook’s throat.

“I’ll have your woman,” Tom Perrill said, though Hook could scarcely hear him over the shouts and screams echoing up the tunnel. More shouts sounded from the sow where attackers fought a bitter sudden battle against startled defenders. Then Robert Perrill’s sword came down and Hook rolled again, throwing himself against his enemies’ feet and he heaved up so that Robert Perrill tumbled against the far wall and the poleax was still in Hook’s hand as he scrambled to his feet and turned on Thomas Perrill, who simply ran away.

“Coward!” Hook shouted, and looked down to Robert who was flailing the sword uselessly and screaming, screaming, and Hook suddenly understood why. The earth was quivering as another scream, thin as a blade, sounded in Hook’s ears.

“Down!” Saint Crispinian said.

And the earth was shaking now, and the thin scream was lost in thunder, only the thunder was not from the sky, but from the earth, and Hook obeyed the saint, crouching down beside Robert Perrill as the tunnel roof collapsed.

It seemed to last forever. Timbers cracked, the noise groaned and boomed, and the earth fell.

Hook closed his eyes. The thin scream was back, but it was inside his head. It was fear, his own scream, his terror of death. He was breathing dust. At the last day, he knew, the dead would rise from the earth. They would come from their graves, the earth making way for their flesh and bones, and they would face east toward the shining holy city of Jerusalem, and the sky in the east would be brighter than the sun and a great terror would swamp the newly resurrected dead as they stood in their winding sheets. There would be screaming and crying, folk flinching from the sudden dazzle of new light, but all the dead priests of the parish would have been buried with their feet toward the west so that when they rose from their tombs they would face their frightened congregations and could call out reassurance. And for some reason, as the earth collapsed to make Hook’s grave, he thought of Sir Martin, and wondered whether that twisted, sour, long-jawed face would be the first he would see on the last day when trumpets filled the heavens and God came in glory to take His people.

A roof timber slammed down, and the earth fell and Hook was crouched and the thunder was all around him and the scream in his head died to a whimper.

And then there was silence.

Sudden, utter, black silence.

Hook breathed.

“Oh, God,” Robert Perrill moaned.

Something pressed on Hook’s back. It was heavy, and seemed immovable, but it was not crushing him. The darkness was absolute.

“Oh, God, please,” Perrill said.

The earth shuddered again and there was a muffled bang. A gun, Hook thought, and now he could even hear voices, but they were very far off. His mouth was full of grit. He spat.

The poleax was still in Hook’s right hand, but he could not move it. The weapon was trapped by something. He let go of it and felt around him, conscious that he was in a small, tight space. His fingers groped across Perrill’s head. “Help me,” Perrill said.

Hook said nothing.

He felt behind him and realized a roof timber had half fallen and somehow left this small space where he crouched and breathed. The timber slanted down and it was that rough oak that was pressing into his spine. “What do I do?” he asked aloud.

“You’re not far from the surface,” Saint Crispinian said.

“You must help me,” Perrill said.

If I move I die, Hook thought.

“Nick! Help me,” Perrill said, “please!”

“Just push up,” Saint Crispinian said.

“Show some courage,” Saint Crispin said in his harsher voice.

“For God’s sake, help me,” Perrill moaned.

“Move to your right,” Saint Crispinian said, “and don’t be frightened.”

Hook moved slowly. Earth fell.

“Now dig your way out,” Saint Crispinian said, “like a mole.”

“Moles die,” Hook said, and he wanted to explain how they trapped moles by blocking their tunnels and then digging out the frightened animals, but the saint did not want to listen.

“You’re not going to die,” the saint said impatiently, “not if you dig.”

So Hook pushed upward, scrabbling at the earth with both hands, and the soil caved in, filling his mouth and he wanted to scream, but he could not scream, and he pushed with his legs, using all the strength in his body, and the earth collapsed around him and he was certain he would die here, except that suddenly, quite suddenly, he was breathing clean air. His grave had been very shallow, nothing but a shroud of fallen soil and he was half standing in open air and was astonished to discover that full night had not yet fallen. It seemed to be raining, except the sky was clear, and then he realized the French were shooting crossbow bolts from the barbican and from the half-wrecked walls. They were not shooting at him, but at men peering from the English trenches and around the edges of the sow.

Hook was up to his waist in earth. He reached down beside his right leg and took hold of Robert Perrill’s leather jerkin. He pulled, and the earth was loose enough to let him drag the choking archer up into the last of the daylight. A crossbow bolt thumped into the soil a few inches from Hook and he went very still.

He was in what looked like a crude trench and the high sides of the trench gave him some protection from the French bolts. The town’s defenders were cheering. They had seen the tunnel’s collapse and they saw the English trying to rescue anyone who might have survived the catastrophe and so they were filling the twilight with crossbow bolts to drive those rescuers back.

“Oh, God,” Robert Perrill sighed.

“You’re alive,” Hook said.

“Nick?”

“We have to wait,” Hook said.

Robert Perrill choked and spat out earth. “Wait?”

“Can’t move till dark,” Hook said, “they’re shooting at us.”

“My brother!”

“He ran away,” Hook said. He wondered what had happened to Sir Edward. Had that deeper part of the mine collapsed? Or had the French killed all the men in the tunnel? The enemy had driven their own shaft above the English excavation and then dropped into the tunnel and Hook imagined the sudden fight, the death in the darkness, and the pain of dying in the ready-made grave. “You were going to kill me,” he said to Robert Perrill.

Perrill said nothing. He was half lying on the trench floor, but his legs were still buried. He had lost his sword.

“You were going to kill me,” Hook said again.

“My brother was.”

“You held the sword,” Hook said.

Perrill wiped dirt from his face. “I’m sorry, Nick,” he said.

Hook snorted, said nothing.

“Sir Martin said he’d pay us,” Perrill admitted.

“Your father?” Hook sneered.

Perrill hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”

“Because he hates me?”

“Your mother rejected him,” Perrill said.

Hook laughed. “And your mother whored herself,” he said flatly.

“He told her she’d go to heaven,” Perrill said, “that if you do it with a priest you go to heaven. That’s what he said.”

“He’s mad,” Hook said flatly, “moon-touched mad.”

Perrill ignored that. “He gave her money, he still does, and he’ll give us money.”

“To kill me?” Hook asked, though the French were trying hard enough to save Sir Martin the trouble. The crossbow bolts were thudding and spitting, some tumbling end over end down the crude trench made by the collapsed tunnel.