Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [130]
“He was a grown man, you know.”
“What did you say, Tom?” Hook asked, startled from half-waking thoughts.
“Nothing,” Scarlet said, “I was falling asleep till you woke me.”
“He was a very good man,” the voice said quietly, “and he’s resting in heaven now.”
Saint Crispinian, Hook thought, and his view of the country was misted by tears. You’re still with me, he wanted to say.
“In heaven there are no tears,” the saint went on, “and no sickness. There’s no dying and no masters. There’s no hunger. Michael is in joy.”
“You all right, Nick?” Tom Scarlet asked.
“I’m all right,” Hook said, and thought that Crispinian knew all about brothers. He had suffered and died with his own brother, Crispin, and they were both with Michael now, and somehow that seemed good.
It took the best part of the day to restore the two causeways and then the army began to cross in two long lines of horses and wagons and archers and servants and women. The king, resplendent in armor and crown, galloped past Hook’s ditch. He was followed by a score of nobles who curbed their horses and, like Hook, gazed northward. But the French army that had been keeping pace along the river’s northern bank had fallen far behind and there was no enemy in sight. The English were across the river and now had entered territory claimed by the Duke of Burgundy, though it was still France. But between the army and England there were now no major obstacles unless the French army intervened.
“We march on,” Henry told his commanders.
They would march north again, north and west. They would march toward Calais, toward England and to safety. They marched.
They left the wide River Somme behind, but next day, because the army was footsore, sick, and hungry, the king ordered a halt. The rain had cleared and the sun shone through wispy clouds. The army was now in well-wooded country so there was fuel for fires and the encampment took on a holiday air as men hung their clothes to dry on makeshift hurdles. Sentries were set, but it seemed as though England’s army was all alone in the vastness of France. Not one Frenchman appeared. Men scavenged the woods for nuts, mushrooms, and berries. Hook hoped to find a deer or a boar, but the animals, like the enemy, were nowhere to be seen.
“We might just have escaped,” Father Christopher greeted Hook on his return from his abortive hunt.
“The king must think so,” Hook said.
“Why?”
“Giving us a day’s halt?”
“Our gracious king,” the priest said, “is so mad that he might just be hoping the French will catch us.”
“Mad? Like the French king?”
“The French king is really mad,” Father Christopher said, “no, our king is just convinced of God’s favor.”
“Is that madness?”
Father Christopher paused as Melisande came to join them. She leaned on Hook, saying nothing. She was thinner than Hook had ever seen her, but the whole army was thin now; thin, hungry, and ill. Somehow Hook and his wife had both avoided the bowel-emptying sickness, though many others had caught the disease and the camp stank of it. Hook put his arm about her, holding her close and thinking suddenly that she had become the most precious thing in all his world. “I hope to God we have escaped,” Hook said.
“And our king half hopes that,” Father Christopher said, “and half hopes that he can prove God’s favor.”
“And that’s his madness?”
“Beware of certainty. There are men in the French army, Hook, who are as convinced as Henry that God is on their side. They’re good men too. They pray, they give alms, they confess their sins, and they vow never to sin again. They are very good men. Can they be wrong in their conviction?”
“You tell me, father,” Hook said.
Father Christopher sighed. “If I understood God, Hook, I would understand everything because God is everything. He is the stars and the sand, the wind and the calm, the sparrow and the sparrowhawk. He knows everything, He knows my fate and He knows your fate, and if I