Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [126]
“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