Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [112]
“Le paon does,” she insisted.
“Must be a French bird then,” Hook said, “not an English one.”
Harfleur was now English. The cross of Saint George flew from the ruined stump of Saint Martin’s tower, and the people of the city, who had suffered so much, were now given more suffering.
They were expelled. The city, the king declared, would be resettled by English people, just as Calais had been, and to make room for those new inhabitants over two thousand men, women, and children were driven from the city. The sick were taken in carts, the rest walked, and two hundred mounted Englishmen guarded the sad column’s progress along the north bank of the Seine. The English soldiers were there to protect the refugees from their own countrymen who would otherwise have robbed and raped. Men-at-arms led the procession and archers flanked it.
Hook was one of the archers. He had been reunited with his black gelding, Raker, who was fretful and needed constant curbing. Hook’s surcoat was washed clean, though the red cross of Saint George had faded to a dull pink. Beneath the surcoat he wore a coat of good mail that he had taken from a French corpse and an aventail that Sir John had given him, and over the aventail’s hood he now had a bascinet that was another gift from a corpse. The bascinet was a helmet with a wide brim designed to deflect a downward blade, though like other archers Hook had hacked off the brim on the right side to make a space for his bow’s cord when he drew it to the full. His sword hung at his side, his cased bow was slung across his shoulder, while his arrow bag hung from the saddle’s cantle. To his right, beyond the refugees, the narrowing river rippled sun-bright, while to the left were meadows stripped of livestock by English forage parties and, beyond those pastures, gentle wooded hills still heavy in their full summer leaf. Melisande had stayed in Harfleur, but Father Christopher had insisted on accompanying the refugees. He was mounted on Sir John’s great destrier, Lucifer. Sir John wanted the horse exercised, and Father Christopher was happy to oblige. “You shouldn’t have come, father,” Hook told him.
“You’re a doctor of medicine now, Hook?”
“You’re supposed to rest, father.”
“There’ll be rest enough in heaven,” Father Christopher said happily. He was still pale, but he was eating again. He was wearing a priest’s robe, something he had done more frequently since his recovery. “I learned something during that illness,” the priest said in apparent seriousness.
“Aye? What was that?”
“In heaven, Hook, there will be no shitting.”
Hook laughed. “But will there be women, father?”
“In abundance, young Hook, but what if they’re all good women?”
“You mean the bad ones will all be in the devil’s cellar, father?”
“That is a worry,” Father Christopher said with a smile, “but I trust God to make suitable arrangements.” He grinned, happy to be alive and riding under a September sun beside a hedge thick with blackberries. A corncrake’s grating cry echoed from the hills. Just after dawn, when the protesting refugees had been forced out of Harfleur, a stag had appeared on the Rouen road resplendent in his new antlers. Hook had taken it as a good omen, but Father Christopher, looking up at the dark branches of a dead elm tree, now found a gloomy one. “The swallows are gathering early,” he said.
“A bad winter then,” Hook said.
“It means summer’s end, Hook, and with it go our hopes. Like those swallows, we will disappear.”
“Back to England?”
“And to disappointment,” the priest said sadly. “The king has debts to pay, and he can’t pay them. If he had carried home a victory then it wouldn’t matter.”
“We won, father,” Hook said, “we captured Harfleur.”
“We used a pack of wolfhounds to kill a hare,” Father Christopher said, “and out there,” he nodded eastward, “there’s a much larger pack of hounds gathering.”
Some of that larger pack appeared at midday. The front of the long column of refugees had stopped in some meadows beside the river and now the tail of the column crowded in behind them. What