Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [73]
Melisande spat some fast words that only made Lanferelle smile more. “I put you in the convent,” he said, still speaking English, “because you were too pretty to be humped by some sweaty peasant and too ill-born to be married to a gentleman. But now it seems you found the peasant anyway,” he gave Hook a derisive glance, “and the fruit is picked, eh? But picked or not,” he said, “you are still my possession.”
“She’s mine,” Hook said, and was ignored.
“So what shall I do? Take you back to the nunnery?” Lanferelle asked, then grinned delightedly when Melisande raised the crossbow an inch higher. “You won’t shoot,” he said.
“I will,” Hook said, but it was a barren threat for he had no arrow on his string and knew he would be given no time to pull one from the bag.
“Who do you serve?” Lanferelle asked.
“Sir John Cornewaille,” Hook said proudly.
Lanferelle was pleased. “Sir John! Ah, there’s a man. His mother must have slept with a Frenchman! Sir John! I like Sir John,” he smiled. “But what of Melisande, eh? What of my little novice?”
“I hated the convent,” she spat at him, using English.
Lanferelle frowned as though her sudden outburst puzzled him. “You were safe there,” he said, “and your soul was safe.”
“Safe!” Melisande protested, “in Soissons? Every nun was raped or killed!”
“You were raped?” Lanferelle asked, his voice dangerous.
“Nicholas stopped him,” she said, gesturing at Hook, “he killed him first.”
The dark eyes brooded on Hook for an instant, then returned to Melisande. “So what do you want?” he asked, almost angrily. “You want a husband? Someone to look after you? How about him?” Lanferelle jerked his head toward his squire. “Maybe you should marry him? He’s gently born, but not too gently. His mother was a saddler’s daughter.” The squire, who plainly did not understand a word that was being said, stared dumbly at Melisande. He wore no helmet, but had an aventail instead, a hood of chain mail that framed a sweaty face scarred by childhood pox. His nose had been flattened in some fight and he had thick, wet-looking lips. Melisande grimaced and spoke urgently in French, so urgently that Hook only understood part of what she said. She was scornful and tearful at the same time, and her words appeared to amuse her father. “She says she will stay with you,” Lanferelle translated for Hook, “but that depends upon my wishes. It depends on whether I let you live.”
Hook was thinking that he could lunge upward with the bowstave and drive the horn-nocked tip into Lanferelle’s throat, or else into the soft tissue under his chin and keep driving the shaft so that it pierced the Frenchman’s brain.
“No,” the voice spoke in his head. It was almost a whisper, but unmistakably the voice of Saint Crispinian who had been silent for so long. “No,” the saint said again.
Hook almost fell to his knees in gratitude. His saint had returned. Lanferelle was smiling. “Were you thinking to attack me, Englishman?”
“Yes,” Hook admitted.
“And I would have killed you,” Lanferelle said, “and maybe I will anyway?” He stared toward the place where the wagons waited beside the road. Those wagons were hidden by the thick summer foliage, but shouts were loud and Hook could hear the sharp sound of bowstrings being loosed. “How many of you are there?” Lanferelle asked.
Hook thought about lying, but decided Lanferelle would discover the truth soon enough. “Forty archers,” he admitted.
“No men-at-arms?”
“None,” Hook said.
Lanferelle shrugged as if the information were not that important. “So, you capture Harfleur, and what then? Do you march on Paris? On Rouen? You don’t know. But I know. You will march somewhere. Your Henry has not spent all that money to capture one little harbor! He wants more. And when you march, Englishman, we shall be around you and in front of you and behind you, and you will die in ones and twos until there are only a few of you left, and then we shall close on you like wolves on a flock. And will my daughter die because you will be too weak to protect her?