Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [37]
So Hook stepped through the small gate built into the larger one, and thus he and Melisande crossed into England where he was an outlaw.
But Saint Crispinian had kept his word and Hook had come home.
THREE
Even in summer the hall of Calais Castle was chilly. The thick stone walls kept the warmth at bay and so a great fire crackled in the hearth, and in front of the stone fireplace was a wide rug on which two couches stood and six hounds slept. The rest of the room was stone-flagged. Swords were racked along one wall, and iron-tipped lances rested on trestles. Sparrows flitted among the beams. The shutters at the western end of the hall were open and Hook could hear the endless stirring of the sea.
The garrison commander and his elegant lady sat on one couch. Hook had been told their names, but the words had slithered through his head and so he did not know who they were. Six men-at-arms stood behind the couch, all watching Hook and Melisande with skeptical and hostile eyes, while a priest stood at the rug’s edge, looking down at the two fugitives who knelt on the stone flags. “I do not understand,” the priest said in a nasally unpleasant voice, “why you left Lord Slayton’s service.”
“Because I refused to kill a girl, father,” Hook explained.
“And Lord Slayton wished her dead?”
“His priest did, sir.”
“Sir Giles Fallowby’s son,” the man on the couch put in, and his voice suggested he did not like Sir Martin.
“So a man of God wished her dead,” the priest ignored the garrison commander’s tone, “yet you knew better?” His voice was dangerous with menace.
“She was only a girl,” Hook said.
“It was through woman,” the priest pounced fiercely on Hook’s answer, “that sin entered the world.”
The elegant lady put a long pale hand over her mouth as if to hide a yawn. There was a tiny dog on her lap, a little bundle of white fur studded with pugnacious eyes, and she stroked its head. “I am bored,” she said, speaking to no one in particular.
There was a long silence. One of the hounds whimpered in its sleep and the garrison commander leaned forward to pat its head. He was a heavyset, black-bearded man who now gestured impatiently toward Hook. “Ask him about Soissons, father,” he ordered.
“I was coming to that, Sir William,” the priest said.
“Then come to it quickly,” the woman said coldly.
“Are you outlawed?” the priest asked instead and, when the archer did not answer, he repeated the question more loudly and still Hook did not answer.
“Answer him,” Sir William growled.
“I would have thought his silence was eloquence itself,” the lady said. “Ask him about Soissons.”
The priest grimaced at her commanding tone, but obeyed. “Tell us what happened in Soissons,” he demanded, and Hook told the tale again, how the French had entered the town by the southern gate and how they had raped and killed, and how Sir Roger Pallaire had betrayed the English archers.
“And you alone escaped?” the priest asked sourly.
“Saint Crispinian helped me,” Hook said.
“Oh! Saint Crispinian did?” the priest asked, raising an eyebrow. “How very obliging of him.” There was a snort of half-suppressed laughter from one of the men-at-arms, while the others just stared with distaste at the kneeling archer. Disbelief hung in the castle’s great hall like the woodsmoke that leaked around the wide hearth’s opening. Another of the men-at-arms was staring fixedly at Melisande and now leaned close to his neighbor and whispered something that made the other man laugh. “Or did the French let you go?” the priest demanded sharply.
“No, sir!” Hook said.
“Perhaps they let you go for a reason!”
“No!”
“Even a humble archer can count men,” the priest said, “and if our lord the king collects an army, then the French will wish to know numbers.”
“No, sir!” Hook said again.
“So they let you go, and bribed you with a whore?” the priest suggested.
“She’s no whore!” Hook protested and the men-at-arms sniggered.
Melisande had not yet spoken. She had seemed overawed by the big men in their mail coats and