Agincourt - Cornwell Bernard - Страница 38

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“She’s mine,” Hook said, and was ignored.

“So what shall I do? Take you back to the nunnery?” Lanferelle asked, then grinned delightedly when Melisande raised the crossbow an inch higher. “You won’t shoot,” he said.

“I will,” Hook said, but it was a barren threat for he had no arrow on his string and knew he would be given no time to pull one from the bag.

“Who do you serve?” Lanferelle asked.

“Sir John Cornewaille,” Hook said proudly.

Lanferelle was pleased. “Sir John! Ah, there’s a man. His mother must have slept with a Frenchman! Sir John! I like Sir John,” he smiled. “But what of Melisande, eh? What of my little novice?”

“I hated the convent,” she spat at him, using English.

Lanferelle frowned as though her sudden outburst puzzled him. “You were safe there,” he said, “and your soul was safe.”

“Safe!” Melisande protested, “in Soissons? Every nun was raped or killed!”

“You were raped?” Lanferelle asked, his voice dangerous.

“Nicholas stopped him,” she said, gesturing at Hook, “he killed him first.”

The dark eyes brooded on Hook for an instant, then returned to Melisande. “So what do you want?” he asked, almost angrily. “You want a husband? Someone to look after you? How about him?” Lanferelle jerked his head toward his squire. “Maybe you should marry him? He’s gently born, but not too gently. His mother was a saddler’s daughter.” The squire, who plainly did not understand a word that was being said, stared dumbly at Melisande. He wore no helmet, but had an aventail instead, a hood of chain mail that framed a sweaty face scarred by childhood pox. His nose had been flattened in some fight and he had thick, wet-looking lips. Melisande grimaced and spoke urgently in French, so urgently that Hook only understood part of what she said. She was scornful and tearful at the same time, and her words appeared to amuse her father. “She says she will stay with you,” Lanferelle translated for Hook, “but that depends upon my wishes. It depends on whether I let you live.”

Hook was thinking that he could lunge upward with the bowstave and drive the horn-nocked tip into Lanferelle’s throat, or else into the soft tissue under his chin and keep driving the shaft so that it pierced the Frenchman’s brain.

“No,” the voice spoke in his head. It was almost a whisper, but unmistakably the voice of Saint Crispinian who had been silent for so long. “No,” the saint said again.

Hook almost fell to his knees in gratitude. His saint had returned. Lanferelle was smiling. “Were you thinking to attack me, Englishman?”

“Yes,” Hook admitted.

“And I would have killed you,” Lanferelle said, “and maybe I will anyway?” He stared toward the place where the wagons waited beside the road. Those wagons were hidden by the thick summer foliage, but shouts were loud and Hook could hear the sharp sound of bowstrings being loosed. “How many of you are there?” Lanferelle asked.

Hook thought about lying, but decided Lanferelle would discover the truth soon enough. “Forty archers,” he admitted.

“No men-at-arms?”

“None,” Hook said.

Lanferelle shrugged as if the information were not that important. “So, you capture Harfleur, and what then? Do you march on Paris? On Rouen? You don’t know. But I know. You will march somewhere. Your Henry has not spent all that money to capture one little harbor! He wants more. And when you march, Englishman, we shall be around you and in front of you and behind you, and you will die in ones and twos until there are only a few of you left, and then we shall close on you like wolves on a flock. And will my daughter die because you will be too weak to protect her?”

“I protected her in Soissons,” Hook said, “you didn’t.”

A tremor of anger showed on Lanferelle’s face. The sword tip quivered, but there was also an uncertainty in the Frenchman’s eyes. “I looked for her,” he said. He sounded defensive.

“Not well enough,” Hook responded fiercely, “and I found her.”

“God led him to me,” Melisande spoke in English for the first time.

“Oh! God?” Lanferelle had recovered his poise and sounded amused. “You think God is on your side, Englishman?”

“I know He is,” Hook said stoutly.

“And you know what they call me?”

“The Lord of Hell,” Hook said.

Lanferelle nodded. “It is a name, Englishman, just a name to frighten the ignorant. But despite that name I want my soul in heaven when I die, and for that I need people to pray for me. I need masses said, I need prayers chanted, and I need nuns and priests on their knees.” He nodded at Melisande. “Why should she not pray for me?”

“I do,” Melisande said.

“But will God listen to her prayers?” Lanferelle asked. “She deserted God for you, and that is her choice, but let us see what God wants, Englishman. Hold up your hand.” He paused and Hook did not move. “You want to live?” Lanferelle snarled. “Hold up your hand! Not that one!” He wanted Hook’s right hand, the hand with the fingertips hardened to calluses by the friction of the bow’s cord.

Hook held up his right hand.

“Spread your fingers,” Lanferelle ordered and moved his sword slowly so that the blade’s tip just touched Hook’s palm. “I could kill you,” Lanferelle said, “but my daughter likes you and I have an affection for her. But you took her blood without my permission, and blood demands blood.” He moved his wrist, only his wrist, but so deftly and so strongly that the blade’s tip moved an arrow’s length in the air, and moved so fast that Hook had no chance to evade before the blade sliced off his smallest finger. The blood welled and ran. Melisande screamed, but did not pull the crossbow’s trigger. Hook felt no pain for a heartbeat, then the agony streaked through his arm.

“There,” Lanferelle said, amused, “I leave you the fingers for the string, yes? For her sake. But when the wolves close on you, Englishman, you and I shall play our game. If you win, you keep her, but if you lose, she goes to his marriage bed,” he jerked his head at his slack-mouthed squire. “It’s a stinking bed and he ruts like a boar. He grunts. Do you agree to our game?”

“God will give us victory,” Hook said. His hand was all pain, but he had kept the hurt from showing on his face.

“Let me tell you something,” Lanferelle said, leaning from his saddle. “God does not give a cow’s wet turd about your king or mine. Do you agree to our game? We fight for Melisande, yes?”

“Yes,” Hook said.

“Then put your arrows down,” Lanferelle said, “and throw your bows away.”

Hook understood that the Frenchman did not want an arrow in his back as he rode away, and so he and Tom Scarlet threw their bowstaves into the tangled leaves of the felled oak, then dropped their arrow bags.

Lanferelle smiled. “We have an agreement, Englishman! The prize is Melisande, but we must seal it with blood, yes?”

“It is sealed,” Hook said, holding up his blood-soaked hand.

“We are playing for a life,” Lanferelle said, “not for blood,” and with that he touched a knee to his stallion, which turned obediently and the Lord of Hell swept his sword with the swiveling horse and the blade’s tip ripped through Matt Scarlet’s throat to fill the greenwood with a spray of red and a jet of blood, and Tom Scarlet cried aloud and Lanferelle laughed as he spurred eastward followed by his two men.

“Matt!” Tom Scarlet dropped to his knees beside his twin brother, but Matthew Scarlet was dying as fast as the blood that pumped from his torn and bubbling throat.

The hoofbeats faded. There was no more shouting from where the wagons were parked. Melisande was crying.

Hook fetched the bows. The French had gone. He used an ax to make a grave under an oak tree, a wide grave, wide enough for Matt Scarlet and Peter Goddington to lie together on the ridge above the sea.

Above Harfleur, where the guns tore the walls into rubble.

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