Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [131]
“You would be God,” Melisande said.
“And that I cannot be,” Father Christopher said, “because we cannot comprehend everything. Only God does that, so beware of a man who says he knows God’s will. He is like a horse that believes it controls its rider.”
“And our king believes that?”
“He believes he is God’s favorite,” Father Christopher said, “and perhaps he is. He is a king, after all, anointed and blessed.”
“God made him a king,” Melisande said.
“His father’s sword made him a king,” Father Christopher said tartly, “but, of course, God could have guided that sword.” He made the sign of the cross. “Yet there are those,” he spoke softly now, “who say his father had no right to the throne. And the sins of the fathers are visited on their sons.”
“You’re saying…” Hook began, then checked his tongue because the conversation was veering dangerously close to treason.
“I’m saying,” Father Christopher said firmly, “that I pray we get home to England before the French find us.”
“They’ve lost us, father,” Hook said, hoping he was right.
Father Christopher smiled gently. “They may not know where we are, Hook, but they know where we’re going. So they don’t need to find us, do they? All they need do is get ahead of us and let us find them.”
“And we’re resting for the day,” Hook said grimly.
“So we are,” the priest said, “which means we must pray that our enemy is at least two days’ march behind us.”
Next day they rode on. Hook was one of the scouts who ranged two miles ahead of the vanguard and looked for the enemy. He liked being a scout. It meant he could put his sharpened stake on a wagon and ride free in front of the army. The clouds were thickening again and the wind was cold. There had been a frost whitening the grass when the camp stirred, though it had vanished quickly enough. The beech leaves had turned to a dull red-gold and the oaks to the color of bronze, while some trees had already shed their foliage. The lower pastures were half flooded from the recent rain, while the fields that had been deep-plowed for winter wheat showed long streaks of silvery water between the ridges left by the plowshare. Hook’s men were following a drover’s path that led past villages, but the hovels were all empty. There was no livestock and no grain. Someone, he thought, knew the English were on this road and had stripped the countryside bare, but whoever had organized that deprivation had vanished. There was no sign of an enemy.
It began to rain again at midday. It was just a drizzle, but it penetrated every gap in Hook’s clothing. Raker, his horse, went slowly. The whole army was going slowly, incapable of speed. They passed a town and Hook, so dulled now to what he saw, scarce looked at the walls with their brightly defiant banners. He just rode on, following the road, leaving the town and its battlements behind until, quite suddenly, Hook knew they were doomed.
He and his men had breasted a small rise and in front of them was a wide grassy valley, its far side rising gently to the horizon where there was a church tower and a spread of woods. The valley was pastureland, empty of life now, but scarred across the valley floor was the evidence of their approaching doom.
Hook curbed Raker and stared.
Because right across his front, stretching from east to west, was a smear of mud, a great wide scar of churned land where every blade of grass had vanished. Water glinted from the myriad holes left by the hooves of horses. The ground was a mess, churned and rutted and broken and pitted, because an army had marched through the valley.
It must have been a great army, Hook thought. Thousands of horses had left the tracks that were newly made. He rode to the edge of the scar and saw the clarity of the hoofprints so distinctly that in places he could see the marks left by the horseshoe nails. He stared westward, to where that vanished army had gone, but he saw nothing, only the path by which the thousands of men had traveled. The scarred earth turned north at the valley’s end.
“Sweet Jesus,” Tom Scarlet