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By Root 1241 0

of hawthorn hedges. Sir John was cheerful, animated by the prospect of war. He rode ahead, followed by his pages, his squire, and a standard-bearer who carried the flag of the crowned red lion with its golden star. Three carts bore provisions, short lances, armor, spare bowstaves, and sheaves of arrows. The road south led through woods that were thickly hazed with bluebells and past fields where the year’s first hay had already been cut and was laid to dry in long rows. Newly shorn sheep looked naked and thin in the meadows. More bands of men joined the road, all horsemen, all in strange livery, and all going toward the south coast where the king had summoned the men who had signed his jaggedly cut contracts. Most of the horsemen, Hook noted, were archers, outnumbering the men-at-arms by three to one. The long bows were stored in leather cases that were slung over their owners’ shoulders.

Hook was happy. Sir John’s men were his companions now. Peter Goddington, the centenar, was a fair man, tough with laggards, but warm in his approval of the men who shared his dream of creating the best company of archers in England. Thomas Evelgold was next in command and he, like Goddington, was an older man, almost thirty. He was a morose man, slower thinking than the centenar, but he was grudgingly helpful to the younger archers among whom Hook found his particular friends. There were the twins, Thomas and Matthew Scarlet, both a year younger than Hook, and Will of the Dale who could reduce the company to helpless laughter with his imitations of Sir John. The four drank together, ate together, laughed together, and competed against each other, though it was recognized among all the archers that none could outshoot Nicholas Hook. They had practiced with weapons all winter and now France was ahead and God was on their side. Father Christopher had assured them of that in a sermon preached the day before they rode. “Our lord the king’s quarrel with the French is just,” Father Christopher had said with unusual seriousness, “and our God will not abandon him. We go to right a wrong, and the forces of heaven will march with us!” Hook did not understand the quarrel except that somewhere in the king’s ancestry was a marriage that led Henry to the French throne, and perhaps he was the rightful king and perhaps he was not, but Hook did not care. He was just happy to wear the Cornewaille lion and star.

And he was happy that Melisande was one of the women chosen to ride with the company. She had a small, fine-boned mare that belonged to Sir John’s wife, the sister of the late king, and she rode it well. “We must take women with us,” Sir John had explained.

“God is merciful,” Father Christopher had murmured.

“We can’t wash our own clothes!” Sir John had said. “We can’t sew! We can’t cook! We must have women! Useful things, women. We don’t want to be like the French! Humping each other when a sheep isn’t available, so we’ll take women!” He liked Melisande to ride alongside him and chatted away to her in French, making her laugh.

“He does not really hate the French,” Melisande told Hook on the evening that they arrived near a town with a large abbey. The abbey bell was summoning the faithful to prayer, but Hook did not move. He and Melisande were sitting beside a small river that flowed placidly through lush water meadows. Across the river, two fields away, another company of men-at-arms and archers was making camp. The fires of Sir John’s men were already burning, hazing the trees and the distant abbey tower with smoke. “He just likes to be rude about the French,” Melisande said.

“About everyone.”

“He is kind inside,” Melisande said, then leaned back to rest her head on his chest. When standing she barely reached his shoulder. Hook loved the fragility of her looks, though he knew that apparent frailty was deceptive for he had learned that Melisande had the supple strength of a bowstave and, like a bow that had followed the string and so been bent into a permanent curve even when unstrung, she possessed fiercely held opinions. He loved that in