Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [45]
Sir John looked to be close on forty years old, but he was still the most feared tournament fighter in Europe. He was a squat, thick-chested man, bowlegged from years spent on horseback. He had the brightest blue eyes Hook had ever seen, while his flat, broken-nosed face showed the scars of battles, whether fought against rebels, Frenchmen, tavern brawlers, or tournament opponents. Now, in anticipation of war with France, he was raising a company of archers and another of men-at-arms, though in Sir John’s eyes, there was no great difference between the two. “We are a company!” he shouted at the archers, “archers and men-at-arms together! We fight for each other! No one hurts one of us and goes unhurt!” He turned and poked a metal finger into Hook’s chest. “You’ll do, Hook. Give him his coat, Goddington.”
Peter Goddington brought Hook a surcoat of white linen that showed Sir John’s badge: a red rampant lion with a golden star on its shoulder and a golden crown on its snarling head.
“Welcome to the company,” Sir John said, “and to your new duties. What are your new duties, Hook?”
“To serve you, Sir John.”
“No! I’ve got servants who do that! Your job, Hook, is to rid the world of anyone I don’t like! What is it?”
“To rid the world of anyone you don’t like, Sir John.”
And that was liable to be a large part of the world. Sir John Cornewaille loved his king, he worshipped his older wife who was the king’s aunt, he adored the women on whom he fathered bastards, and he was devoted to his men, but the rest of the world were nearly all goddam scum who deserved to die. He tolerated his fellow Englishmen, but the Welsh were cabbage-farting dwarves, the Scots were scabby arse-suckers, and the French were shriveled turds. “You know what you do with shriveled turds, Hook?”
“You kill them, Sir John.”
“You get up close and kill them,” Sir John said. “You let them smell your breath as they die. You let them see you grinning as you disembowel them. You hurt them, Hook, and then you kill them. Isn’t that right, father?”
“You speak with the tongue of angels, Sir John,” Father Christopher said blandly. He was Sir John’s confessor and, like the company of archers gathered in the field, wore a mail coat, tall boots, and a close-fitting helmet. There was nothing about him to suggest he was a priest, but if there had been any such evidence then he would not have been in Sir John’s employment. Sir John wanted soldiers.
“You’re not archers,” Sir John growled at the bowmen in the winter field. “You shoot arrows till the putrid bastards are on top of you, and then you kill them like men-at-arms! You’re no good to me if you can only shoot! I want you so close you can smell their dying farts! Ever killed a man so close you could have kissed him, Hook?”
“Yes, Sir John.”
Sir John grinned. “Tell me about the last one? How did you do it?”
“With a knife, Sir John.”
“How! Not what with! How?”
“Ripped his belly, Sir John,” Hook said, “straight up.”
“Did you get your hand wet, Hook?”
“Drenched, Sir John.”
“Wet with a Frenchman’s blood, eh?”
“He was an English knight, Sir John.”
“God damn your bollocks, Hook, but I love you!” Sir John exclaimed. “That’s how you do it!” he shouted at the archers, “you rip their bellies open, shove blades in their eyes, slice their throats, cut off their bollocks, drive swords up their arses, tear out their gullets, gouge their livers, skewer their kidneys, I don’t care how you do it, so long as you kill them! Isn’t that right, Father Christopher?”
“Our Lord and Savior could not have expressed the sentiment more eloquently, Sir John.”
“And next year,” Sir John said, glowering at his archers, “we might be going to war! Our king,