Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [61]
Before they could climb the hill they needed to cross a sullen stretch of moon-glossed marsh that lay behind the beach’s thick bank of earth and shingle. There was a path of sorts that doglegged its way over the swampy ground, but Sir John Cornewaille insisted the archers spread either side of the track so that, if an ambush was sprung, they could shoot their arrows in from the flanks. Peter Goddington cursed as he waded between the tussocks. “He’ll have us killed,” he grumbled as newly woken birds screeched up from the marsh, their sudden wingbeats loud in the night. The surf fell and sucked on the beach.
The marsh was a bowshot wide, a little more than two hundred paces. Hook could shoot further, but so could every crossbowman in France and, as he splashed toward the dark woods that grew almost to the marsh’s edge, he watched the black shadows in fear of a sudden noise that would betray the release of a bolt. The French had known the English were coming. They would have had spies counting the shipping in Southampton Water and the fishermen would have brought news that the great fleet was off the coast. And the French had taken the trouble to defend even this small cove with an elaborate earthwork, so why were they not manning it? Because, Hook thought, they were waiting in the woods. Because they wanted to kill this advance party as it crossed the marsh.
“Hook! Tom and Matt! Dale! Go right!” Goddington waved the four men toward the eastern side of the marsh. “Head on up the hill!”
Hook splashed off to his right, followed by the twins and by William of the Dale. Behind them the men-at-arms were grouped on the track. Every man, whether lord or archer, was wearing the badge of Saint George on his surcoat. The legs of the men-at-arms were cased in plate armor that reflected the moon white and bright, while their drawn swords looked like streaks of purest silver. No crossbow bolts flew from the woods. If the French were waiting then they must be higher up the slope.
Hook climbed a short bank of crumbling earth at the marsh’s northern edge. He turned to see the fleet on the moon-glittered sea, its few lanterns dull red and its masts a forest. The stars were brilliant. He turned back to the wood’s edge that was black as the pit. “Bows are no good in the trees,” he told his companions. He unstrung the stave and slipped it into the horsehide case that had been folded and tucked in his belt. Leave a bow strung too long and it followed the cord to become permanently curved and so lost its power. It was better to store the stave straight and so he slung the case’s leather loop over his shoulder and drew his short sword. His three companions did the same and then followed Hook into the trees.
No Frenchman waited. No sudden sword blow greeted Hook, no crossbow bolt whipped from the dark. There was nothing but the sound of the sea and the blackness under the leaves and the small sounds of a wood at night.
Hook was at home in the trees, even among these foreign trees. Thomas and Matthew Scarlet were fuller’s sons, reared to a mill where great water-driven beams thumped clay into cloth to release the wool’s grease. William of the Dale was a carpenter, but Hook was a forester and a huntsman and he instinctively took the lead. He could hear men off to his left and, not wanting them to mistake him for a Frenchman, headed further to his right. He could smell a boar, and remembered a winter dawn when he had put five man-killing arrows into a great tusked male that had still charged him, arrows clattering in its side, anger fierce in its small eyes, and Hook had only escaped by scrambling up an oak. The boar had died eventually, its hooves stirring the blood-soaked leaf mold as its life drained away.
“Where are we going?” Thomas Scarlet asked.
“Top of the hill,” Hook answered curtly.
“What do we do there?”
“We wait,” Hook said. He did not know