Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [6]
“A ladder,” Will Snoball said, as if he had never heard of such a thing.
“A long one,” Sir Martin said, “long enough to reach that beam.” He jerked his head at the sign of the bull over their heads. “Long, long.” He said the last words distractedly, as if he were already forgetting what business he was about.
“Look for a ladder,” Will Snoball told two of the archers, “a long one.”
“No short ladders for God’s work,” Sir Martin said, snapping his attention back to the archers. He rubbed his thin hands together and grimaced at Hook. “You look ill, Hook,” he added happily, as if hoping Nick Hook were dying.
“The ale tastes funny,” Hook said.
“That’s because it’s Friday,” the priest said, “and you should abstain from ale on Wednesdays and Fridays. Your name-saint, the blessed Nicholas, rejected his mother’s teats on Wednesdays and Fridays, and there’s a lesson in that! There can be no pleasures for you, Hook, on Wednesdays and Fridays. No ale, no joy, and no tits, that is your fate forever. And why, Hook, why?” Sir Martin paused and his long face twisted in a malevolent grin. “Because you have supped on the sagging tits of evil! I will not have mercy on her children, the scriptures say, because their mother hath played the harlot!”
Tom Perrill sniggered. “What are we doing, father?” Will Snoball asked tiredly.
“God’s work, Master Snoball, God’s holy work. Go to it.”
A ladder was found as Sir Edward Derwent crossed the market square with four ropes looped about his broad shoulders. Sir Edward was a man-at-arms and wore the same livery as the archers, though his jupon was cleaner and its colors were brighter. He was a squat, thick-chested man with a face disfigured at the battle of Shrewsbury where a poleax had ripped open his helmet, crushed a cheekbone and sliced off an ear. “Bell ropes,” he explained, tossing the heavy coils onto the ground. “Need them tied to the beam, and I’m not climbing any ladder.” Sir Edward commanded Lord Slayton’s men-at-arms and he was as respected as he was feared. “Hook, you do it,” Sir Edward ordered.
Hook climbed the ladder and tied the bell ropes to the beam. He used the knot with which he would have looped a hempen cord about a bowstave’s nock, though the ropes, being thicker, were much harder to manipulate. When he was done he shinned down the last rope to show that it was tied securely.
“Let’s get this done and over,” Sir Edward said sourly, “and then maybe we can leave this goddamned place. Whose ale is this?”
“Mine, Sir Edward,” Robert Perrill said.
“Mine now,” Sir Edward said, and drained the pot. He was dressed in a mail coat over a leather jerkin, all of it covered with the starry jupon. A sword hung at his waist. There was nothing elaborate about the weapon. The blade, Hook knew, was undecorated, the hilt was plain steel, and the handle was two grips of walnut bolted to the tang. The sword was a tool of Sir Edward’s trade, and he had used it to batter down the rebel whose poleax had taken half his face.
The small crowd had been herded by soldiers and priests into the center of the marketplace where most of them knelt and prayed. There were maybe sixty of them, men and women, young and old. “Can’t burn them all,” Sir Martin said regretfully, “so we’re sending most to hell at the rope’s end.”
“If they’re heretics,” Sir Edward grumbled, “they should all be burned.”
“If God wished that,” Sir Martin said with some asperity, “then God would have provided sufficient firewood.”
More people were appearing now. Fear still pervaded the city, but folk somehow sensed that the greatest moment of danger was over, and so they came to the marketplace and Sir Martin ordered the archers to let them pass. “They should see this for themselves,” the priest explained. There was a sullenness