Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [129]
Hook took no part in the work because the vanguard had been ordered to cross the river before any repairs were made. They left their horses behind, walked to the causeway’s gap, and jumped down into the bog where they struggled across to the causeway’s next stretch, which led to the river bank. They waded the Somme, the archers holding bows and arrow bags above their heads. Hook shivered as he went further into the river. He could not swim and he felt tremors of fear as the water crept over his waist and up to his chest, but then, as he pushed against the slow pressure of the current, the riverbed began to rise again. The footing was firm enough, though a few men slipped and one man-at-arms was swept downstream, his cries fading fast as his mail coat dragged him under. Then Hook was wading through reeds and climbing a short muddy bluff to reach the northern bank. The first men were across the Somme.
Sir John ordered his archers to go a half-mile north to where a straggling hedge and ditch snaked between two wide pastures. “If the goddam French come,” Sir John said bleakly, “just kill them.”
“You expecting their army, Sir John?” Thomas Evelgold asked.
“The one that was tracking us along the river?” Sir John asked, “those bastards will get here soon enough. But their larger army? God only knows. Let’s hope they think we’re still south of the river.”
And even if it was only the smaller army that came, Hook thought, these few archers of the vanguard could not hope to stop it. He sat by a stretch of flooded ditch, beneath a dead alder, staring north, his mind wandering. He had been a bad brother, he decided. He had never looked after Michael properly and, if he was truthful with himself, he would admit that his brother’s trusting character and unending optimism had grated on him. He gave a nod when Thomas Scarlet, who had lost his own twin brother to Lanferelle’s sword, squatted beside him. “I’m sorry about Michael,” Scarlet said awkwardly, “he was a good lad.”
“He was,” Hook said.
“Matt was too.”
“Aye, he was. A good archer.”
“He was,” Scarlet said, “he was.”
They looked north in silence. Sir John had said that the first evidence of a French force would be mounted scouts, but no horsemen were visible.
“Michael always snatched at the string,” Hook said. “I tried to teach him, but he couldn’t stop it. He always snatched. Spoiled his aim, it did.”
“It does,” Scarlet said.
“He never learned,” Hook said, “and he didn’t steal that goddamned box either.”
“He didn’t seem like a thief.”
“He wasn’t! But I know who did steal it, and I’ll cut his goddam throat.”
“Don’t hang for it, Nick.”
Hook grimaced. “If the French catch us, it won’t matter, will it? I’ll either be hanged or chopped down.” Hook had a sudden vision of the archers dying in their tortured agony in front of the little church in Soissons. He shivered.
“But we’ve crossed the river,” Scarlet said firmly, “and that’s good. How far now?”
“Father Christopher says it’s a week’s marching from here, maybe a day or two longer.”
“That’s what they said a couple of weeks ago,” Scarlet said ruefully, “but doesn’t matter. We can go hungry for a week.”
Geoffrey Horrocks, the youngest archer, brought a helmet filled with hazelnuts. “Found them up the hedge,” he said, “you want to share them out, sergeant?” he asked Hook.
“You do it, lad. Tell them it’s supper.”
“And tomorrow’s breakfast,” Scarlet said.
“If I had a net we could catch some sparrows,” Hook said.
“Sparrow pie,” Scarlet said wistfully.
They fell silent. The rain had stopped, though the keen wind was chilling the wet archers to the bone. A flock of black starlings,