Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [18]
So Hook went to his knees and prayed to Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian that they would beg forgiveness for his sin in London, and he prayed that they would keep him safe in this their town of martyrdom and send him home unscathed to England. The prayer did not feel as powerful as those he had addressed to the mother of Christ, but it made sense, he decided, to pray to the two saints because this was their town and they would surely keep a special watch on those who prayed to them in Soissons.
“I’m done, lad,” Wilkinson announced briskly. He was pushing something into his pocket and Hook, moving to the altar’s flank, saw that the frontal’s end, where it hung down to the floor, was frayed and ragged because a great square had been crudely cut away. The old man grinned. “Silk, lad, silk. I need silk thread for arrows, so I just stole it.”
“From God?”
“If God can’t afford a few threads of silk, boy, then He’s in dire trouble. And you should be glad. You want to kill Frenchmen, young Hook? Pray that I have enough silk thread to tie up your arrows.”
But Hook had no chance to pray because, next day, under the rising sun, the French came.
The garrison had known they were coming. News had reached Soissons of the surrender of Compiègne, another town that had been captured by the Burgundians, and Soissons was now the only fortress that barred the French advance into Flanders where the main Burgundian army lay, and the French army was reported to be coming east along the Aisne.
And then, suddenly, on a bright summer morning, they were there.
Hook watched their arrival from the western ramparts. Horsemen came first. They wore armor and had bright surcoats, and some galloped close to the town as if daring the bowmen on the walls to shoot. Some crossbowmen loosed bolts, but no horseman or horse was hit. “Save your arrows,” Smithson, the centenar, ordered his English archers. He flicked a careless finger at Hook’s strung bow. “Don’t use it, lad,” he said. “Don’t waste an arrow.” The centenar had come from his tavern, the Goose, and now blinked at the cavorting horsemen, who were shouting inaudibly at the ramparts where men were hanging the Burgundian standard alongside the personal standard of the garrison’s commander, the Sire de Bournonville. Some townsfolk had also come to the walls and they too gazed at the newly arrived horsemen. “Look at the bastards,” Smithson grumbled, gesturing at the townsfolk, “they’d like to betray us. We should have killed every last one of them. We should have slit their goddam French throats.” He spat. “Nothing will happen for a day. Might as well drink ale while it’s still available.” He stumped away, leaving Hook and a half-dozen other English archers on the wall.
All day the French came. Most were on foot, and those men surrounded Soissons and chopped down trees on the low hills to the south. Tents were erected on the cleared land, and beside the tents were the bright standards of the French nobility, a riot of red, blue, gold, and silver flags. Barges came up the river, propelled by giant sweeps, and the barges carried four mangonels, huge machines that could hurl rocks at the city walls. Only one of the massive catapults was brought ashore that day, and Enguerrand de Bournonville, thinking to tip it back into the river, led two hundred mounted men-at-arms on a sally from the western gate, but the French had expected the attack and sent twice as many horsemen to oppose the Burgundians. The two sides reined in, lances upright, and after a while the Burgundians wheeled back, pursued by French jeers. That afternoon smoke began to thicken as the besieging French burned the houses just outside Soissons’s walls. Hook watched the redheaded girl carry a bundle toward the new French encampment. None of the fugitives asked to be admitted to the city, instead they went toward the enemy lines. The girl turned in the thickening smoke to wave farewell to the archers. The first enemy