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By Root 1272 0

each. Hook and Will of the Dale were almost the farthest south, with only the Scarlet twins closer to the sea. Melisande was with Hook. Her hands were raw from washing clothes and there were still more clothes to be boiled and scrubbed back in the encampment, but Sir John’s steward had let her accompany Hook. She carried the small crossbow on her back and never left Sir John’s company without the weapon. “I will shoot that priest if he touches me,” she had told Hook, “and I’ll shoot his friends.” Hook had nodded, but said nothing. She might, he thought, shoot one of them, but the weapon took so long to reload that she had no chance of defending herself against more than one man.

The trees muffled the occasional sound of a cannon firing and dulled the crash of the gun-stones striking home on Harfleur’s walls. The axes were loud. “Why did we come so far from the camp?” Melisande asked.

“Because we’ve chopped down all the big trees that are closer,” Hook said. He was stripped to the waist, his huge muscles driving the ax deep into an oak’s trunk so that the chips flew.

“And we’re not that far away from the camp,” Will of the Dale added. He was standing back, letting Hook do the work and Hook did not mind. He was used to wielding a forester’s ax.

Melisande spanned the crossbow. She found it hard work, but she would not let Hook or Will help her crank the twin handles. She was sweating by the time the pawl clicked to hold the cord under its full tension. She laid a bolt in the groove, then aimed at a tree no more than ten paces away. She frowned, bit her lower lip, then pulled the trigger and watched as the bolt flew a yard wide to skitter through the undergrowth beyond. “Don’t laugh,” she said before either man had any chance to laugh.

“I’m not laughing,” Hook said, grinning at Will.

“I wouldn’t dare,” Will said.

“I will learn,” Melisande said.

“You’ll learn better if you keep your eyes open,” Hook said.

“It’s hard,” she said.

“Look down the arrow,” Will advised her, “hold the bow firm and pull the trigger nice and slowly. And may God bless you when you shoot,” he added the last words in Father Christopher’s sly voice.

She nodded, then cranked the bow again. It took a long time before it clicked, then instead of shooting it she laid the weapon on the leaf mold and just watched Hook and she thought how he made felling a great oak look easy, just as he made shooting a bow seem simple.

“I’ll see if the twins need help,” Will of the Dale said, “because you don’t, Nick.”

“I don’t,” Hook agreed, “so go and help them. They’re fuller’s sons which means they’ve never done a proper day’s work in their lives.”

Will picked up his ax, his arrow bag, and his cased bow and disappeared among the southern trees. Melisande watched him go, then looked down at the cocked crossbow as though she had never seen such a thing before. “Father Christopher was talking to me,” she said quietly.

“Was he?” Hook asked. He looked up at the tree, then back to the cut he had made. “This great thing will fall in a minute,” he warned her. He went to the back side of the trunk and buried the ax in the wood. He wrenched the blade free. “So what did Father Christopher want?”

“He wanted to know if we would marry.”

“Us? Marry?” The ax chopped again and a wedge of wood came away when Hook pulled the blade back. Any moment now, he thought. He could sense the tension in the oak, the silent tearing of the timber that preceded the tree’s death. He stepped away to stand beside Melisande who was well clear of the trunk. He noticed the crossbow was still cocked and almost told her that she would weaken the weapon by leaving the shank stressed, but then decided that might not be a bad thing. A weakened shank would make it easier for her to span. “Marry?” he asked again.

“That’s what he said.”

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t know,” she said, staring at the ground, “maybe?”

“Maybe,” Hook echoed her, and just then the timber cracked and ripped and the huge oak fell, slowly at first, then faster as it crashed through leaves and branches to shudder down. Birds