Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [49]
“That’s the name I heard,” Hook said.
“Le Seigneur d’Enfer,” Melisande said again. “The lord of hell. It is because Lanferelle sounds like l’enfer, and l’enfer is hell, but maybe because he is so fierce in a fight. He has sent many men to hell, I think. And some to heaven too.”
Swallows flickered fast over the river and, from the corner of his eye, Hook saw the brilliant blue flash of a kingfisher’s flight. The shadow was unmoving again. He drew the cord further back, unable to pull it to the full extent because Melisande’s slender body obstructed him, but even at half draw the great war bow was a dreadful weapon.
“He is not a bad man,” Melisande said as though she tried to persuade herself of that fact.
“You don’t sound very certain,” Hook said.
“He is my father.”
“Who put you in a nunnery.”
“I did not want to go!” she said fiercely. “I told him! No! No!”
Hook smiled. “You didn’t want to be a nun, eh?”
“I knew the sisters. My mother would take me to visit them. We gave them,” she paused, looking for the English words and failing to find them, “les prunes de damas, abricots et coings.” She shrugged. “I do not know what those things are. Fruit? We gave the sisters fruit, but they were never kind to us. They were horrid.”
“But your father sent you there anyway,” Hook said.
“He said I should pray for him. That was my duty. But you know what I prayed for instead? I prayed he would come for me one day,” she said wistfully, “that he would ride on his great horse through the convent gate and take me away.”
“Is that why you want to go to France?”
She shook her head. “I want to be with you.”
“Your father won’t like me.”
She dismissed that with a shrug. “Why should he ever see us again?”
Hook aimed just beneath the shadow, though he was not thinking about his aim. Instead he was thinking about a tall man with long black hair who did nothing to stop torture and agony. He was thinking about the lord of hell. “Supper,” he said harshly, and released the cord.
The arrow leaped off the string, its white feathers bright in the sinking sun. It slashed into the water and there was a sudden thrashing, a churning turmoil that sent trout exploding upstream, and the thrashing went on as Hook jumped into the river.
The pike had been spitted by the arrow that had pinned it to the river’s far bank, and Hook had to pull hard to yank the shaft free. He carried the fish back. It twisted on the arrow and tried to bite him, but once on the western bank he rapped its skull with the hilt of his knife and the huge fish died instantly. It was almost as long as his bow, a great dark hunter with savage teeth.
“Un brochet!” Melisande said with delight.
“A pike,” Hook said, “and there’s good eating on a pike.” He gutted the fish on the bank, spilling the offal back into the river.
Next day Sir John led a contingent of men-at-arms and archers westward to buy grain, dried peas, and smoked meat, and Sir John gave Hook the easy duty, which was to stay in a village under a fold of the hills and to guard the sacks and barrels that were being piled on a wagon, which stood outside a tavern called the Mouse and Cheese. The wagon’s two draft horses were picketed on the village green. Hook’s bow, unstrung, lay on an outside table beside the pot of ale that the tavern keeper had given him, but Hook was up on the wagon bed, pounding flour into a barrel. Father Christopher, dressed in shirt, breeches, and boots, wandered aimlessly, peering into the cottages, petting cats, and teasing the women who washed clothes in the stream that edged the village’s one street. He finally came back to the Mouse and Cheese and dropped a small bag of silver coins onto the table. It was the priest’s job to pay for any food that a farmer or villager might wish to sell. “Why are you hitting the flour, young Hook?” the priest asked.
“I’m packing it down tight, father. Salt, hazel, and flour!”
Father Christopher gave an exaggerated grimace of distaste. “You’re salting the flour?”
“There’s a layer of salt at the bottom of the barrel,” Hook explained,